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+Project Gutenberg's Loafing Along Death Valley Trails, by William Caruthers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Loafing Along Death Valley Trails
+       A Personal Narrative of People and Places
+
+Author: William Caruthers
+
+Release Date: April 30, 2016 [EBook #51899]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOAFING ALONG DEATH VALLEY TRAILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             LOAFING ALONG
+                          DEATH VALLEY TRAILS
+
+
+                          By WILLIAM CARUTHERS
+
+               A Personal Narrative of People and Places
+
+                  COPYRIGHT 1951 BY WILLIAM CARUTHERS
+
+        Printed in the U.S.A. by P-B Press, Inc., Pomona, Calif.
+                Published by Death Valley Publishing Co.
+                          Ontario, California
+
+
+
+
+                               DEDICATION
+
+
+To one who, without complaint or previous experience with desert
+hardships, shared with me the difficult and often dangerous adventures
+in part recorded in this book, which but for her persistent urging,
+would never have reached the printed page. She is, of course, my
+wife—with me in a sense far broader than the words imply:
+_always—always_.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+  Dedication                                                            5
+  This Book                                                             9
+  I A Foretaste of Things to Come                                      11
+  II What Caused Death Valley                                          19
+  III Aaron and Rosie Winters                                          25
+  IV John Searles and His Lake of Ooze                                 30
+  V But Where Was God?                                                 35
+  VI Death Valley Geology                                              39
+  VII Indians of the Area                                              43
+  VIII Desert Gold. Too Many Fractions                                 48
+  IX Romance Strikes the Parson                                        53
+  X Greenwater—Last of the Boom Towns                                  60
+  XI The Amargosa Country                                              64
+  XII A Hovel That Ought To Be a Shrine                                82
+  XIII Sex in Death Valley Country                                     87
+  XIV Shoshone Country. Resting Springs                                92
+  XV The Story of Charles Brown                                       102
+  XVI Long Man, Short Man                                             109
+  XVII Shorty Frank Harris                                            113
+  XVIII A Million Dollar Poker Game                                   125
+  XIX Death Valley Scotty                                             130
+  XX Odd But Interesting Characters                                   136
+  XXI Roads. Cracker Box Signs                                        144
+  XXII Lost Mines. The Breyfogle and Others                           154
+  XXIII Panamint City. Genial Crooks                                  164
+  XXIV Indian George. Legend of the Panamint                          171
+  XXV Ballarat. Ghost Town                                            175
+  Index                                                               189
+
+
+
+
+                               THIS BOOK
+
+
+This book is a personal narrative of people and places in Panamint
+Valley, the Amargosa Desert, and the Big Sink at the bottom of America.
+Most of the places which excited a gold-crazed world in the early part
+of the century are now no more, or are going back to sage. Of the actors
+who made the history of the period, few remain.
+
+It was the writer’s good fortune that many of these men were his
+friends. Some were or would become tycoons of mining or industry. Some
+would lucklessly follow jackasses all their lives, to find no gold but
+perhaps a finer treasure—a rainbow in the sky that would never fade.
+
+It is the romance, the comedy, the often stark tragedy these men left
+along the trail which you will find in the pages that follow.
+
+Necessarily the history of the region, often dull, is given first
+because it gives a clearer picture of the background and second, because
+that history is little known, being buried in the generally unread
+diaries of John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, Lt. Brewerton, Jedediah Smith,
+and the stories of early Mormon explorers.
+
+It is interesting to note that a map popular with adventurers of
+Fremont’s time could list only six states west of the Mississippi River.
+These were Texas, Indian Territory, Missouri, Oregon, and Mexico’s two
+possessions—New Mexico and Upper California. There was no Idaho, Utah,
+Nevada, Arizona, Washington, or either of the Dakotas. No Kansas. No
+Nebraska.
+
+Sources of material are given in the text and though careful research
+was made, it should be understood that the history of Death Valley
+country is argumentative and bold indeed is one who says, “Here are the
+facts.”
+
+With something more than mere formality, the writer wishes to thank
+those mentioned below:
+
+My longtime friend, Senator Charles Brown of Shoshone who has often
+given valuable time to make available research material which otherwise
+would have been almost impossible to obtain. Of more value, have been
+his personal recollections of Greenwater, Goldfield, and Tonopah, in all
+of which places he had lived in their hectic days.
+
+Mrs. Charles Brown, daughter of the noted pioneer, Ralph Jacobus (Dad)
+Fairbanks and her sister, Mrs. Bettie Lisle, of Baker, California. The
+voluminous scrapbooks of both, including one of their mother, Celestia
+Abigail Fairbanks, all containing information of priceless value were
+always at my disposal while preparing the manuscript.
+
+Dad Fairbanks, innumerable times my host, was a walking encyclopedia of
+men and events.
+
+One depository of source material deserves special mention. Nailed to
+the wall of Shorty Harris’ Ballarat cabin was a box two feet wide, four
+feet long, with four shelves. The box served as a cupboard and its
+calico curtains operated on a drawstring. On the top shelf, Shorty would
+toss any letter, clipping, record of mine production, map, or bulletin
+that the mails had brought, visitors had given, or friends had sent. And
+there they gathered the dust of years.
+
+Wishing to locate the address of Peter B. Kyne, author of The Parson of
+Panamint, whose host Shorty had been, I removed these documents and
+discovered that the catch-all shelf was a veritable treasure of
+little-known facts about the Panamint of earlier days.
+
+There were maps, reports of geologic surveys, and bulletins now out of
+print; newspapers of the early years and scores of letters with valuable
+material bearing the names of men internationally known.
+
+It is with a sense of futility that I attempt to express my indebtedness
+to my wife, who with a patience I cannot comprehend, kept me searching
+for the facts whenever and wherever the facts were to be found; typing
+and re-typing the manuscript in its entirety many times to make it, if
+possible, a worthwhile book.
+
+                                  Ontario, California, December 22, 1950
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter I
+                     A Foretaste of Things to Come
+
+
+In the newspaper office where the writer worked, was a constant parade
+of adventurers. Talented press agents; promoters; moguls of mining and
+prospectors who, having struck it rich, now lived grandly in palatial
+homes, luxurious hotels or impressive clubs. In their wake, of course,
+was an engaging breed of liars, and an occasional adventuress who by
+luck or love had left a boom town crib to live thereafter “in marble
+halls with vassals” at her command. All brought arresting yarns of Death
+Valley.
+
+For 76 years this Big Sink at the bottom of America had been a land of
+mystery and romantic legend, but there had been little travel through it
+since the white man’s first crossing. “I would have starved to death on
+tourists’ trade,” said the pioneer Ralph (Dad) Fairbanks.
+
+More than 3,000,000 people lived within a day’s journey in 1925, but
+excepting a few, who lived in bordering villages and settlements, those
+who had actually been in Death Valley could be counted on one’s fingers
+and toes. The reasons were practical. It was the hottest region in
+America, with few water holes and these far apart. There were no
+roads—only makeshift trails left by the wagons that had hauled borax in
+the Eighties. Now they were little more than twisting scars through
+brush, over dry washes and dunes, though listed on the maps as roads.
+For the novice it was a foolhardy gamble with death. “There are easier
+ways of committing suicide,” a seasoned desert man advised.
+
+I had been up and down the world more perhaps than the average person
+and this seemed to be a challenge to one with a vagabond’s foot and a
+passion for remote places. So one day I set out for Death Valley.
+
+At the last outpost of civilization, a two-cabin resort, the sign over a
+sand-blasted, false-fronted building stressed: “Free Information.
+Cabins. Eats. Gas. Oil. Refreshments.”
+
+Needing all these items, I parked my car and walked into a foretaste of
+things-to-come. The owner, a big, genial fellow, was behind the counter
+using his teeth to remove the cork from a bottle labeled “Bourbon”—a
+task he deftly accomplished by twisting on the bottle instead of the
+cork. “I want a cabin for the night,” I told him, “and when you have
+time, all the free information I can get.”
+
+“You’ve come to headquarters,” he beamed as he set the bottle on the
+table, glanced at me, then at the liquor and added: “Don’t know your
+drinking sentiments but if you’d like to wet your whistle, take one on
+the house.”
+
+While he was getting glasses from a cabinet behind the counter, a
+slender, wiry man with baked skin, coal-black eyes and hair came through
+a rear door, removed a knapsack strapped across his shoulders and set it
+in the farthest corner of the room. Two or three books rolled out and
+were replaced only after he had wiped them carefully with a red bandana
+kerchief. A sweat-stained khaki shirt and faded blue overalls did not
+affect an impression he gave of some outstanding quality. It may have
+been the air of self assurance, the calm of his keen eyes or the majesty
+of his stride as he crossed the floor.
+
+My host glanced at the newcomer and set another glass on the table,
+“You’re in luck,” he said to me. “Here comes a man who can tell you
+anything you want to know about this country.” A moment later the
+newcomer was introduced as “Blackie.”
+
+“Whatever Blackie tells you is gospel. Knows every trail man or beast
+ever made in that hell-hole, from one end to the other. Ain’t that
+right, Blackie?”
+
+Without answering, Blackie focused an eye on the bottle, picked it up,
+shook it, watched the beads a moment. “Bourbon hell ... just plain
+tongue oil.”
+
+After the drink my host showed me to one of the cabins—a small, boxlike
+structure. Opening the door he waved me in. “One fellow said he couldn’t
+whip a cat in this cabin, but you haven’t got a cat.” He set my suitcase
+on a sagging bed, brought in a bucket of water, put a clean towel on the
+roller and wiped the dust from a water glass with two big fingers. “When
+you get settled come down and loaf with us. Just call me Bill. Calico
+Bill, I’m known as. Came up here from the Calico Mountains.”
+
+“Just one question,” I said. “Don’t you get lonesome in all this
+desolation?”
+
+“Lonesome? Mister, there’s something going on every minute. You’d be
+surprised. Like what happened this morning. Did you meet a truck on your
+way up, with a husky young driver and a girl in a skimpy dress?”
+
+“Yes,” I said. “At a gas station a hundred miles back, and the girl was
+a breath-taker.”
+
+“You can say that again,” Bill grinned. “Prettiest gal I ever saw—bar
+none. She’s just turned eighteen. Married to a fellow fifty-five if he’s
+a day. He owns a truck and hauls for a mine near here at so much a load.
+Jealous sort. Won’t let her out of his sight. You can’t blame a young
+fellow for looking at a pretty girl. But this brute is so crazy jealous
+he took to locking her up in his cabin while he was at work. Fact is,
+she’s a nice clean kid and if I’d known about it, I’d have chased him
+off. I reckon she was too ashamed to tell anybody.
+
+“Of course the young fellows found it out and just to worry him, two or
+three of ’em came over here to play a prank on him and a hell of a prank
+it was. They made a lot of tracks around his cabin doors and windows. He
+saw the tracks and figured she’d been stepping out on him. So instead of
+locking her in as usual, he began to take her to work with him so he
+could keep his eyes on her.
+
+“Yesterday it happened. His truck broke down and this morning he left
+early to get parts, but he was smart enough to take her shoes with him.
+Then he nailed the doors and windows from the outside. Soon as he was
+out of hearing, somehow she busted out and came down to my store
+barefooted and asked me if I knew of any way she could get a ride out.
+‘I’m leaving, if I have to walk,’ she says. Then she told me her story.
+He’d bought her back in Oklahoma for $500. She is one of ten children.
+Her folks didn’t have enough to feed ’em all. This old guy, who lived in
+their neighborhood and had money, talked her parents into the deal. ‘I
+just couldn’t see my little sisters go hungry,’ she said, and like a
+fool she married him.
+
+“I reckon the Lord was with her. We see about three outside trucks a
+year around here, but I’d no sooner fixed her up with a pair of shoes
+before one pulls up for gas. I asked the driver if he’d give her a ride
+to Barstow. He took just one look. ‘I sure will,’ he says and off they
+went.
+
+“You see what I mean,” Bill said, concluding his story. “Things like
+that. Of course we don’t watch no parades but we also don’t get pushed
+around and run over and tromped on.”
+
+In the last twelve words Bill expressed what hundreds have failed to
+explain in pages of flowered phrase—the appeal of the desert.
+
+Soon I was back at the store. Bill and Blackie, over a new bottle were
+swapping memories of noted desert characters who had highlighted the
+towns and camps from Tonopah to the last hell-roarer. The great, the
+humble, the odd and eccentric. Through their conversation ran such names
+as Fireball Fan; Mike Lane; Mother Featherlegs; Shorty Harris; Tiger
+Lil; Hungry Hattie; Cranky Casey; Johnny-Behind-the-Gun; Dad Fairbanks;
+Fraction Jack Stewart; the Indian, Hungry Bill; and innumerable Slims
+and Shortys featured in yarns of the wasteland.
+
+Blackie’s chief interest in life, Bill told me was books. “About all he
+does is read. Doesn’t have to work. Of course, like everybody in this
+country, he’s always going to find $2,000,000,000 this week or next.”
+
+Though only incidental, history was brought into their conversation when
+Bill, giving me “free information” as his sign announced, told me I
+would be able to see the place where Manly crossed the Panamint.
+
+“Manly never knew where he crossed,” Blackie said. “He tried to tell
+about it 40 years afterward and all he did was to start an argument
+that’s going on yet. That’s why I say you can write the known facts
+about Death Valley history on a postage stamp with the end of your
+thumb.”
+
+The tongue oil loosened Calico Bill’s story of Indian George and his
+trained mountain sheep. “George had the right idea about gold. Find it,
+then take it out as needed. One time an artist came to George’s ranch
+and made a picture of the ram. When he had finished it he stepped behind
+his easel and was watching George eat a raw gopher snake when the goat
+came up. Rams are jealous and mistaking the picture for a rival, he
+charged like a thunderbolt.
+
+“It didn’t hurt the picture, but knocked the painter and George through
+both walls of George’s shanty. George picked himself up. ‘Heap good
+picture. Me want.’ The fellow gave it to him and for months George would
+tease that goat with the picture. One day he left it on a boulder while
+he went for his horse. When he got back, the boulder was split wide open
+and the picture was on top of a tree 50 feet away.
+
+“Somebody told George about a steer in the Chicago packing house which
+led other steers to the slaughter pen and it gave George an idea. One
+day I found him and his goat in a Panamint canyon and asked why he
+brought the goat along. ‘Me broke. Need gold.’ Since he didn’t have
+pick, shovel, or dynamite, I asked how he expected to get gold.
+
+“‘Pick, shovel heap work,’ George said. ‘Dynamite maybe kill. Sheep
+better. Me show you.’ He told me to move to a safe place and after
+scattering some grain around for the goat, George scaled the boulder. It
+was big as a house. A moment later I saw him unroll the picture and with
+strings attached, let it rest on one corner of the big rock. Then
+holding the strings, he disappeared into his blind higher up. Suddenly
+he made a hissing noise. The Big Horn stiffened, saw the picture,
+lowered his head and never in my life have I seen such a crash. Dust
+filled the air and fragments fell for 10 minutes. When I went over
+George was gathering nuggets big as goose eggs. ‘White man heap dam’
+fool,’ he grunted. ‘Wants too much gold all same time. Maybe lose. Maybe
+somebody steal. No can steal boulder.’”
+
+The “tongue oil” had been disposed of when Blackie suggested that we
+step over to his place, a short distance around the point of a hill.
+“Plenty more there.”
+
+Bill had told me that as a penniless youngster Blackie had walked up
+Odessa Canyon one afternoon. Within three days he was rated as a
+millionaire. Within three months he was broke again. Later Blackie told
+me, “That’s somebody’s dream. I got about $200,000 and decided I
+belonged up in the Big Banker group. They welcomed me and skinned me out
+of my money in no time.”
+
+It was Blackie who proved to my satisfaction that money has only a minor
+relation to happiness. His house was part dobe, part white tufa blocks.
+On his table was a student’s lamp, a pipe, and can of tobacco. A book
+held open by a hand axe. Other books were shelved along the wall. He had
+an incongruous walnut cabinet with leaded glass doors. Inside, a
+well-filled decanter and a dozen whiskey glasses and a pleasant aroma of
+bourbon came from a keg covered with a gunny sack and set on a stool in
+the corner.
+
+“This country’s hard on the throat,” he explained.
+
+Blackie’s kingdom seemed to have extended from the morning star to the
+setting sun. He had been in the Yukon, in New Zealand, South Africa, and
+the Argentine. Gold, hemp, sugar, and ships had tossed fortunes at him
+which were promptly lost or spent.
+
+For a man who had found compensation for such luck, there is no defeat.
+Certainly his philosophy seemed to meet his needs and that is the
+function of philosophy.
+
+It was cool in the late evening and he made a fire, chucked one end of
+an eight-foot log into the stove and put a chair under the protruding
+end. Bill asked why he didn’t cut the log. “Listen,” Blackie said,
+“you’re one of 100 million reasons why this country is misgoverned. Why
+should I sweat over that log when a fire will do the job?... That book?
+Just some fellow’s plan for a perfect world. I hope I’ll not be around
+when they have it.
+
+“The town of Calico? It was a live one. When John McBryde and Lowery
+Silver discovered the white metal there, a lot of us desert rats got in
+the big money. In the first seven years of the Eighties it was bonanza
+and in the eighth the town was dead.”
+
+But the stories of fortunes made in Mule and Odessa Canyons were of less
+importance to him than a habit of the town judge. “Chewed tobacco all
+the time and swallowed the juice, ‘If a fellow’s guts can’t stand it,’
+he would say, ‘he ought to quit,’ and he’d clap a fine on anybody who
+spat in his court.
+
+“Never knew Jack Dent, did you? Englishman. Now there was a drinking
+man. Said his only ambition was to die drunk. One pay day he got so
+cockeyed he couldn’t stand, so his pals laid him on a pool table and
+went on with their drinking. Every time they ordered, Jack hollered for
+his and somebody would take it over and pour it down him. ‘Keep ’em
+comin’,’ he says. ‘If I doze off, just pry my jaws open and pour it
+down.’
+
+“The boys took him at his word. Every time they drank, they took a drink
+to Jack. When the last round came they took Jack a big one. They tried
+to pry his lips open but the lips didn’t give. Jack Dent’s funeral was
+the biggest ever held in the town.
+
+“Bill was telling you I made a million there, and every now and then I
+hear of somebody telling somebody else I made a million in Africa. And
+another in the Yukon. The truth is, what little I’ve got came out of a
+hole in a whiskey barrel instead of a mine shaft.
+
+“A few years back a strike was made down in the Avawatz that started a
+baby gold rush. I joined it. A fellow named Gypsum came in with a barrel
+of whiskey, thinking there’d be a town, but it didn’t turn out that way.
+Gypsum had no trouble disposing of his liquor and stayed around to do a
+little prospecting. One day when I was starting for Johannesburg, he
+asked me to deliver a message to a bartender there. Gypsum had a meat
+cleaver in his hand and was sharpening it on a butcher’s steel to cut up
+a mountain sheep he’d killed.
+
+“‘Just ask for Klondike and tell him to send my stuff. He’ll understand.
+Tell him if he doesn’t send it, I’m coming after it.’
+
+“I didn’t know at the time that Gypsum had killed three men in honest
+combat and that one of them had been dispatched with a meat cleaver.
+
+“I delivered the message verbatim. Klondike looked a bit worried.
+‘What’s Gypsum doing?’ he asked. ‘When I left,’ I said, ‘he was
+sharpening a meat cleaver.’ Klondike turned white. ‘I’ll have it ready
+before you go.’
+
+“When I called later, he told me he’d put Gypsum’s stuff in the back of
+my car. When I got back to camp and Gypsum came to my tent to ask about
+it, I told him to get it out of the car, which was parked a few feet
+away. Gypsum went for it and in a moment I heard him cussing. I looked
+out and he was trying to shoulder a heavy sack. Before I could get out
+to help him, the sack got away from him and burst at his feet. The
+ground was covered with nickles, dimes, quarters, halves. ‘There’s
+another sack.’ Gypsum said. ‘The son of a bitch has sent me $2500 in
+chicken feed. Just for spite.’
+
+“Because it was a nuisance, Gypsum loaned it to the fellows about, all
+of whom were his friends. They didn’t want it but took it just to
+accommodate Gypsum. There was nothing to spend it for. Somebody started
+a poker game and I let ’em use my tent because it was the largest. I
+rigged up a table by sawing Gypsum’s whiskey barrel in two and nailing
+planks over the open end. Every night after supper they started playing.
+I furnished light and likker and usually I set out grub. It didn’t cost
+much but somebody suggested that in order to reimburse me, two bits
+should be taken out of every jackpot. A hole was slit in the top. It was
+a fast game and the stakes high. It ran for weeks every evening and the
+Saturday night session ended Monday morning.
+
+“Of course some were soon broke and they began to borrow from one
+another. Finally everybody was broke and all the money was in my kitty.
+I took the top off the barrel and loaned it to the players, taking
+I.O.U.’s, I had to take the top off a dozen times and when it was
+finally decided there was no pay dirt in the Avawatz, I had a sack full
+of I.O.U.’s.
+
+“Once I tried to figure out how many times that $2500 was loaned, but I
+gave up. I learned though, why these bankers pick up a pencil and start
+figuring the minute you start talking. They are on the right end of the
+pencil.”
+
+Early the next morning while Bill was servicing my car for the trip
+ahead, with some tactful mention of handy gadgets he had for sale, we
+noticed Blackie coming with a man who ran largely to whiskers. “That’s
+old Cloudburst Pete,” Bill told me. “Another old timer who has shuffled
+all over this country.”
+
+“How did he get that moniker?” I asked.
+
+“One time Pete came in here and was telling us fellows about a narrow
+escape he had from a cloudburst over in the Panamint. Pete said the
+cloud was just above him and about to burst and would have filled the
+canyon with a wall of water 90 feet high. A city fellow who had stopped
+for gas, asked Pete how come he didn’t get drowned. Pete took a notion
+the fellow was trying to razz him. ‘Well, Mister, if you must know, I
+lassoed the cloud, ground-hitched it and let it bust....’”
+
+After greeting Pete, Bill asked if he’d been walking all night.
+
+“Naw,” Pete said. “Started around 11 o’clock, I reckon. Not so bad
+before sunup. Be hell going back. But I didn’t come here to growl about
+the weather. I want some powder so I can get started. Found color
+yesterday. Looks like I’m in the big money.”
+
+“Fine,” Bill said. “I heard you’ve been laid up.”
+
+“Oh, I broke a leg awhile back. Fell in a mine shaft. Didn’t amount to
+much.”
+
+“I know about that, but didn’t you get hurt in a blast since then?”
+
+“Oh that—yeh. Got blowed out of a 20-foot hole. Three-four ribs busted,
+the doc said. Come to think of it, believe he mentioned a fractured
+collar bone. Wasn’t half as bad as last week.”
+
+“Good Lord ... what happened last week?”
+
+“That crazy Cyclone Thompson. You know him ... he pulled a stope gate
+and let five-six tons of muck down on me. Nobody knew it—not even
+Cyclone. Wore my fingers to the bone scratching out. Look at these
+hands....”
+
+Pete held up his mutilated hands. “They’ll heal but bigod—that pair of
+brand new double-stitched overalls won’t.”
+
+“Well,” Bill chuckled, “you know where the powder is. Go in and get it.”
+
+Bill and Blackie remained to see me off, each with a friendly word of
+advice. “Just follow the wheel tracks,” Bill said, as I climbed into my
+car and Blackie added: “Keep your eyes peeled for the cracker box signs
+along the edge of the road. You’ll see ’em nailed to a stake and stuck
+in the ground.”
+
+A moment later I was headed into a silence broken only by the whip of
+sage against the car. Ahead was the glimmer of a dry lake and in the
+distance a great mass of jumbled mountains that notched the pale skies.
+Beyond—what?
+
+I never dreamed then that for twenty-five years I would be poking around
+in those deceiving hills.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter II
+                       What Caused Death Valley?
+
+
+When you travel through the desolation of Death Valley along the Funeral
+Range, you may find it difficult to believe that several thousand feet
+above the top of your car was once a cool, inviting land with rivers and
+forests and lakes, and that hundreds of feet below you are the dry beds
+of seas that washed its shores.
+
+Scientists assert that all life—both animal and vegetable began in these
+buried seas—probably two and one-half billion years ago.
+
+It is certain that no life could have existed on the thin crust of earth
+covered as it was with deadly gases. Therefore, your remotest ancestors
+must have been sea creatures until they crawled out or were washed
+ashore in one of Nature’s convulsions to become land dwellers.
+
+Since sea water contains more gold than has ever been found on the
+earth, it may be said that man on his way up from the lowest form of
+life was born in a solution of gold.
+
+That he survived, is due to two urges—the sex urge and the urge for
+food. Without either all life would cease.
+
+Note. The author’s book, _Life’s Grand Stairway_ soon to be published,
+contains a fast moving, factual story of man and his eternal quest for
+gold from the beginning of recorded time.
+
+Camping one night at Mesquite Spring, I heard a prospector cursing his
+burro. It wasn’t a casual cursing, but a classic revelation of one who
+knew burros—the soul of them, from inquisitive eyes to deadly heels. A
+moment later he was feeding lumps of sugar to the beast and the feud
+ended on a pleasant note.
+
+We were sitting around the camp fire later when the prospector showed me
+a piece of quartz that glittered at twenty feet.
+
+“Do you have much?” I asked.
+
+“I’ve got more than Carter had oats, and I’m pulling out at daylight. Me
+and Thieving Jack.”
+
+“I suppose,” I said aimlessly, “you’ll retire to a life of luxury; have
+a palace, a housekeeper, and a French chef.”
+
+“Nope. Chinaman cook. Friend of mine struck it rich. He had a female
+cook. After that he couldn’t call his soul his own. Me? First money I
+spend goes for pie. Never had my fill of pie. Next—” He paused and
+looked affectionately at Thieving Jack. “I’m going to buy a ranch over
+at Lone Pine with a stream running smack through the middle. Snow water.
+I aim to build a fence head high all around it and pension that burro
+off. As for me—no mansion. Just a cottage with a screen porch all
+around. I’m sick of horseflies and mosquitoes.”
+
+He was off at sunrise and my thought was that God went with him and
+Thieving Jack.
+
+If you encounter scorching heat you will find little comfort in the fact
+that icebergs once floated in those ancient seas. It is almost certain
+that you will be curious about the disorderly jumble of gutted hills;
+the colorful canyons and strange formations and ask yourself what caused
+it.
+
+The answer is found on Black Mountain in the Funeral Range. Here
+occurred a convulsion of nature without any known parallel and the tops
+of nearby mountains became the bottom of America—an upheaval so violent
+that the oldest rocks were squeezed under pressure from the nethermost
+stratum of the earth to lie alongside the youngest on the surface.
+
+The seas and the fish vanished. The forests were buried. The prehistoric
+animals, the dinosaurs and elephants were trapped.
+
+The result, after undetermined ages, is today’s Death Valley. A shorter
+explanation was that of my companion on my first trip to Black
+Mountain—a noted desert character—Jackass Slim. There we found a
+scientist who wished to enlighten us. To his conversation sprinkled with
+such words as Paleozoic and pre-Cambrian Slim listened raptly for an
+hour. Then the learned man asked Slim if he had made it plain.
+
+“Sure,” Slim said. “You’ve been trying to say hell broke loose.”
+
+The Indians, who saw Death Valley first, called it “Tomesha,” which
+means Ground Afire, and warned adventurers, explorers, and trappers that
+it was a vast sunken region, intolerant of life.
+
+The first white Americans known to have seen it, belonged to the party
+of explorers led by John C. Fremont and guided by Kit Carson.
+
+Death Valley ends on the south in the narrow opening between the
+terminus of the Panamint Range and that of the Black Mountains. Through
+this opening, though unaware of it, Fremont saw the dry stream bed of
+the Amargosa River, on April 27, 1844, flowing north and in the distance
+“a high, snowy mountain.” This mountain was Telescope Peak, 11,045 feet
+high.
+
+Nearly six years later, impatient Forty Niners enroute to California
+gold fields, having heard that the shortest way was through this
+forbidden sink, demanded that their guide take them across it.
+
+“I will go to hell with you, but not through Death Valley,” said the
+wise Mormon guide, Captain Jefferson Hunt.
+
+Scoffing Hunt’s warning, the Bennett-Arcane party deserted and with the
+Jayhawkers became the first white Americans to cross Death Valley. The
+suffering of the deserters, widely advertised, gave the region an evil
+reputation that kept it practically untraveled, unexplored, and accursed
+for the next 75 years, or until Charles Brown of Shoshone succeeded in
+having wheel tracks replaced with roads.
+
+With the opening of the Eichbaum toll road from Lone Pine to Stovepipe
+Wells in 1926-7 a trickle of tourists began, but actually as late as
+1932, Death Valley had fewer visitors than the Congo. A few prospectors,
+a few daring adventurers and a few ranchers had found in the areas
+adjoining, something in the great Wide Open that answered man’s inherent
+craving for freedom and peace. “The hills that shut this valley in,”
+explained the old timer, “also shut out the mess we left behind.”
+
+Tales of treasure came in the wake of the Forty Niners but it was not
+until 1860 that the first prospecting party was organized by Dr. Darwin
+French at Oroville, California. In the fall of that year he set out to
+find the Lost Gunsight mine, the story of which is told in another
+chapter.
+
+On this trip Dr. French discovered and gave his name to Darwin Falls and
+Darwin Wash in the Panamint range. He named Bennett’s Well on the floor
+of Death Valley to honor Asa (or Asabel) Bennett, a member of the
+Bennett-Arcane party. He gave the name of another member of that party
+to Towne’s Pass, now a thrilling route into Death Valley but then a
+breath-taking challenge to death.
+
+He named Furnace Creek after finding there a crude furnace for reducing
+ore. He also named Panamint Valley and Panamint Range, but neither the
+origin of the word Panamint nor its significance is known. Indians found
+there said their tribe was called Panamint, but those around there are
+Shoshones and Piutes. (See note at end of this chapter.)
+
+Also in 1860 William Lewis Manly who with John Rogers, a brave and husky
+Tennessean had rescued the survivors of the Bennett-Arcane party,
+returned to the valley he had named, to search for the Gunsight. Manly
+found nothing and reported later he was deserted by his companions and
+escaped death only when rescued by a wandering Indian.
+
+In 1861 Lt. Ives on a surveying mission explored a part of the valley in
+connection with the California Boundary Commission. He used for pack
+animals some of the camels which had been provided by Jefferson Davis,
+Secretary of War, for transporting supplies across the western deserts.
+
+In 1861 Dr. S. G. George, who had been a member of French’s party,
+organized one of his own and for the same reason—to find the Lost
+Gunsight. He made several locations of silver and gold, explored a
+portion of the Panamint Range. The first man ever to scale Telescope
+Peak was a member of the George party. He was W. T. Henderson, who had
+also been with Dr. French. Henderson named the mountain “because,” he
+said, “I could see for 200 miles in all directions as clearly as through
+a telescope.”
+
+The most enduring accomplishment of the party was to bring back a name
+for the mountain range east of what is now known as Owens Valley, named
+for one of Fremont’s party of explorers. From an Indian chief they
+learned this range was called Inyo and meant “the home of a Great
+Spirit.” Ultimately the name was given to the county in the southeast
+corner of which is Death Valley.
+
+Tragedy dogged all the early expeditions. July 21, 1871 the Wheeler
+expedition left Independence to explore Death Valley. This party of 60
+included geologists, botanists, naturalists, and soldiers. One
+detachment was under command of Lt. George Wheeler. Lt. Lyle led the
+other. Lyle’s detachment was guided by C. F. R. Hahn and the third day
+out Hahn was sent ahead to locate water. John Koehler, a naturalist of
+the party is alleged to have said that he would kill Hahn if he didn’t
+find water. Failing to return Hahn was abandoned to his fate and he was
+never seen again.
+
+William Eagan, guide of Wheeler’s party was sent to Rose Springs for
+water. He also failed to return. What became of him is not known and the
+army officers were justly denounced for callous indifference. On the
+desert, inexcusable desertion of a companion brands the deserter as an
+outcast and has often resulted in his lynching.
+
+It is interesting to note that apart from a Government Land Survey in
+1856, which proved to be utterly worthless, there is no authentic record
+of the white man in Death Valley between 1849 and 1860. However, during
+this decade the canyons on the west side of the Panamint harbored
+numerous renegades who had held up a Wells-Fargo stage or slit a miner’s
+throat for his poke of gold. Some were absorbed into the life of the
+wasteland when the discovery of silver in Surprise Canyon brought a
+hectic mob of adventurers to create hell-roaring Panamint City.
+
+When, in the middle Seventies Nevada silver kings, John P. Jones and Wm.
+R. Stewart, who were Fortune’s children on the Comstock, decided
+$2,000,000 was enough to lose at Panamint City, many of the outlaws
+wandered over the mountain and down the canyon to cross Death Valley and
+settle wherever they thought they could survive on the eastern
+approaches.
+
+Soon Ash Meadows, Furnace Creek Ranch, Stump Springs, the Manse Ranch,
+Resting Springs, and Pahrump Ranch became landmarks.
+
+The first white man known to have settled in Death Valley was a person
+of some cunning and no conscience, known as Bellerin’ Teck, Bellowing
+Tex Bennett, and Bellowin’ Teck. He settled at Furnace Creek in 1870 and
+erected a shanty alongside the water where the Bennett-Arcane party had
+camped when driven from Ash Meadows by Indians whose gardens they had
+raided and whose squaws they had abused, according to a legend of the
+Indians and referred to with scant attention to details, by Manly.
+(Panamint Tom, famed Indian of the region, in speaking of this raid by
+the whites, told me that the head man of his tribe sent runners to Ash
+Meadows for reinforcements and that the recruits were marched in circles
+around boulders and in and out of ravines to give the impression of
+superior strength. This strategy deceived the whites, who then went on
+their way.)
+
+Teck claimed title to all the country in sight. Little is known of his
+past, but whites later understood that he chose the forbidding region to
+outsmart a sheriff. He brought water through an open ditch from its
+source in the nearby foothills and grew alfalfa and grain. He named his
+place Greenland Ranch and it was the beginning of the present Furnace
+Creek Ranch.
+
+There is a tradition that Teck supplemented his meager earnings from the
+ranch by selling half interests to wayfarers, subsequently driving them
+off.
+
+There remains a record of one such victim—a Mormon adventurer named
+Jackson. In part payment Teck took a pair of oxen, Jackson’s money and
+his only weapon, a rifle. Shortly Teck began to show signs of
+dissatisfaction. His temper flared more frequently and Jackson became
+increasingly alarmed. When finally Teck came bellowing from his cabin,
+brandishing his gun, Jackson did the right thing at the right moment. He
+fled, glad to escape with his life.
+
+This became the pattern for the next wayfarer and the next. Teck always
+craftily demanded their weapons in the trade, but knowing that sooner or
+later some would take their troubles to a sheriff or return for revenge,
+Teck sold the ranch, left the country and no trace of his destiny
+remains.
+
+Before Aaron and Rosie Winters or Borax Smith ever saw Death Valley, one
+who was to attain fame greater than either listed more than 2000
+different plants that grew in the area.
+
+Notwithstanding this important contribution to knowledge of the valley’s
+flora, only one or two historians have mentioned his name, and these in
+books or periodicals long out of print.
+
+Two decades later he was to become famous as Brigadier General Frederick
+Funston of the Spanish-American War—the only major war in America’s
+history fought by an army which was composed entirely of volunteers
+without a single draftee.
+
+Of interest to this writer is the fact that he was my brigade commander
+and a soldier from the boots up. Not five feet tall, he was every inch a
+fighting man. I served with him while he captured Emilio Aguinaldo,
+famous _Filipino Insurrecto_.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter III
+                        Aaron and Rosie Winters
+
+
+While Bellerin’ Teck was selling half interests in the spectacular hills
+to the unwary, he actually walked over a treasure of more millions than
+his wildest dreams had conjured.
+
+Teck’s nearest neighbor lived at Ash Meadows about 60 miles east of the
+valley.
+
+Ash Meadows is a flat desert area in Nevada along the California border.
+With several water holes, subterranean streams, and abundant wild grass
+it was a resting place for early emigrants and a hole-in for
+prospectors. It was also an ideal refuge for gentlemen who liked its
+distance from sheriffs and the ease with which approaching horsemen
+could be seen from nearby hills.
+
+Lacking was woman. The male needed the female but there wasn’t a white
+woman in the country. So he took what the market afforded—a squaw and
+not infrequently two or three. “He’s my son all right,” a patriarch once
+informed me, “but it’s been so long I don’t exactly recollect which of
+them squaws was his mother.”
+
+Usually the wife was bought. Sometimes for a trinket. Often a horse.
+Among the trappers who first blazed the trails to the West, 30 beaver
+skins were considered a fair price for an able bodied squaw. She was
+capable in rendering domestic service and loyal in love. Too often the
+consort’s fidelity was transient.
+
+“For 20 years,” said the noted trapper, Killbuck, “I packed a squaw
+along—not one, but a many. First I had a Blackfoot—the darndest slut as
+ever cried for fo-farrow. I lodge-poled her on Coulter’s Creek ... as
+good as four packs of beaver I gave for old Bull-tail’s daughter. He was
+the head chief of the Ricaree. Thar wan’t enough scarlet cloth nor beads
+... in Sublette’s packs for her ... I sold her to Cross-Eagle for one of
+Jake Hawkins’ guns.... Then I tried the Sioux, the Shian (Cheyenne) and
+a Digger from the other side, who made the best moccasins as ever I
+wore.”
+
+So Aaron Winters chose his mate from the available supply and with
+Rosie, part Mexican and Indian, part Spanish, he settled in Ash Meadows
+in a dugout. In front and adjoining had been added a shack, part wood,
+part stone. The floors were dirt. Rosie dragged in posts, poles, and
+brush and made a shed. Aaron found time between hunting and trapping to
+add a room of unmortared stone. At times there was no money, but piñon
+nuts grew in the mountains, desert tea and squaw cabbage were handy and
+the beans of mesquite could be ground into flour.
+
+Rosie, to whom one must yield admiration, was not the first woman in
+Winters’ life. “He liked his women,” Ed Stiles recalled, “and changed
+’em often.” But to Rosie, Aaron Winters was always devoted. Her material
+reward was little but all who knew her praised her beauty and her
+virtues.
+
+One day when dusk was gathering there was a rap on the sagging slab door
+and Rosie Winters opened it on an angel unawares. The Winters invited
+the stranger in, shared their meager meal. After supper they sat up
+later than usual, listening to the story of the stranger’s travels. He
+was looking for borax, he told them. “It’s a white stuff....” At this
+time, only two or three unimportant deposits of borax were known to
+exist in America and the average prospector knew nothing about it.
+
+The first borax was mined in Tibet. There in the form of tincal it was
+loaded on the backs of sheep, transported across the Himalayas and
+shipped to London. It was so rare that it was sold by the ounce. Later
+the more intelligent of the western prospectors began to learn that
+borax was something to keep in mind.
+
+To Aaron Winters it was just something bought in a drug store, but Rosie
+was interested in the “white stuff.” She wanted to know how one could
+tell when the white stuff was borax. Patiently the guest explained how
+to make the tests: “Under the torch it will burn green....”
+
+Finally Rosie made a bed for the wayfarer in the lean-to and long after
+he blew out his candle Rosie Winters lay awake, wondering about some
+white stuff she’d seen scattered over a flat down in the hellish heat of
+Death Valley. She remembered that it whitened the crust of a big area,
+stuck to her shoes and clothes and got in her hair when the wind lifted
+the silt.
+
+The next morning Rosie and Aaron bade the guest good luck and goodbye
+and he went into the horizon without even leaving his name. Then Rosie
+turned to Aaron: “Maybe,” she said ... “maybe that white stuff we see
+that time below Furnace Creek—maybe that is borax.”
+
+“Might be,” Aaron answered.
+
+“Why don’t we go see?” Rosie asked. “Maybe some Big Horn sheep—” Rosie
+knew her man and Aaron Winters got his rifle and Rosie packed the
+sow-belly and beans.
+
+It was a long, gruelling trip down into the valley under a Death Valley
+sun but hope sustained them. They made their camp at Furnace Creek, then
+Rosie led Aaron over the flats she remembered. She scooped up some of
+the white stuff that looked like cotton balls while Aaron prepared for
+the test. Then the brief, uncertain moment when the white stuff touched
+the flame. Tensely they watched, Aaron grimly curious rather than
+hopeful; Rosie with pounding heart and lips whispering a prayer.
+
+Then, miracle of miracles—the green flame. They looked excitedly into
+each other’s eyes, each unable to believe. In that moment, Rosie, always
+devout, lifted her eyes to heaven and thanked her God. Neither had any
+idea of the worth of their find. Vaguely they knew it meant spending
+money. A new what-not for Rosie’s mantel. Perhaps pine boards to cover
+the hovel’s dirt floor; maybe a few pieces of golden oak furniture; a
+rifle with greater range than Aaron’s old one; silk or satin to make a
+dress for Rosie.
+
+“Writers have had to draw on their imagination for what happened,” a
+descendant of the Winters once told me. “They say Uncle Aaron exclaimed,
+‘Rosie, she burns green!’ or ‘Rosie, we’re rich!’ but Aunt Rosie said
+they were so excited they couldn’t remember, but she knew what they did!
+They went over to the ditch that Bellerin’ Teck had dug to water the
+ranch and in its warm water soaked their bunioned feet.”
+
+Returning to Ash Meadows they faced the problem of what to do with the
+“white stuff.” Unlike gold, it couldn’t be sold on sight, because it was
+a new industry, and little was known about its handling. Finally Aaron
+learned that a rich merchant in San Francisco, named Coleman was
+interested in borax in a small way and lost no time in sending samples
+to Coleman.
+
+W. T. Coleman was a Kentucky aristocrat who had come to California
+during the gold rush and attained both fortune and the affection of the
+people of the state. He had been chosen leader of the famed Vigilantes,
+who had rescued San Francisco from a gang of the lawless as tough as the
+world ever saw.
+
+Actually Coleman’s interest in borax was a minor incident in the
+handling of his large fortune and his passionate devotion to the
+development of his adopted state. For that reason alone, Coleman had
+become interested in the small deposits of borax discovered by Francis
+Smith, first at Columbus Marsh.
+
+Smith had been a prospector before coming to California, wandering all
+over western country, looking for gold and silver. He was one of those
+who had heard that borax was worth keeping in mind.
+
+Reaching Nevada and needing a grubstake, he began to cut wood to supply
+mines around Columbus, Aurora, and Candelaria. On Teel’s Marsh he found
+a large growth of mesquite, built a shack and claimed all the wood and
+the site as his own. Upon a portion of it, some Mexicans had cut and
+corded some of the wood and Smith refused to let them haul it off. They
+left grudgingly and with threats to return. The Mexicans, of course, had
+as much right to the wood as Smith.
+
+Sensing trouble and having no weapons at his camp, he went twelve miles
+to borrow a rifle. But there were no cartridges and he had to ride sixty
+miles over the mountains to Aurora where he found only four. Returning
+to his shack, he found the Mexicans had also returned with
+reinforcements. Twenty-four were now at work and their mood was
+murderous. Smith had a companion whose courage he didn’t trust and
+ordered him to go out in the brush and keep out of the way.
+
+The Mexicans told Smith they were going to take the wood. Smith warned
+that he would kill the first man who touched the pile. With only four
+cartridges to kill 20 men, it was obviously a bluff. One of the Mexicans
+went to the pile and picked up a stick. Smith put his rifle to his
+shoulder and ordered the fellow to drop it. Unafraid and still holding
+the stick the Mexican said: “You may kill me, but my friends will kill
+you. Put your rifle down and we will talk it over.”
+
+They had cut additional wood during his absence and demanded that they
+be permitted to take all the wood they had cut. Smith consented and when
+the Mexicans had gone he staked out the marsh as a mining claim—which
+led to the connection with Coleman.
+
+Upon receipt of Winters’ letter, Coleman forwarded it to Smith and asked
+him to investigate the Winters claim. Smith’s report was enthusiastic.
+Coleman then sent two capable men, William Robertson and Rudolph
+Neuenschwander to look over the Winters discovery, with credentials to
+buy. Again Rosie and Aaron Winters heard the flutter of angel wings at
+the hovel door. This time the angels left $20,000. Rarely in this world
+has buyer bought so much for so little, but to Aaron and Rosie Winters
+it was all the money in the world.
+
+Despite the troubles of operating in a place so remote from market and
+with problems of a product about which too little was known, borax was
+soon adding $100,000 a year to Coleman’s already fabulous fortune.
+
+Francis M. (Borax) Smith was put in charge of operations under the firm
+name of Coleman and Smith.
+
+Freed from the sordid squalor of the Ash Meadows hovel, the Winters
+bought the Pahrump Ranch, a landmark of Pahrump Valley, and settled down
+to watch the world go by.
+
+Thus began the Pacific Coast Borax Company, one of the world’s
+outstanding corporations. Later Smith was to become president of the
+Pacific Coast Borax Company and later still, he was to head a three
+hundred million dollar corporation for the development of the San
+Francisco and Oakland areas and then face bankruptcy and ruin.
+
+Overlooking the site where Rosie and Aaron made the discovery, now
+stands the magnificent Furnace Creek Inn.
+
+One day while sitting on the hotel terrace, I noticed a plane discharge
+a group of the Company’s English owners and their guests. Meticulously
+dressed, they paid scant attention to the desolation about and hastened
+to the cooling refuge of their caravansary. At dinner they sat down to
+buttered mignon and as they talked casually of the races at Ascot and
+the ball at Buckingham Palace, I looked out over that whitehot slab of
+hell and thought of Rosie and Aaron Winters trudging with calloused feet
+behind a burro—their dinner, sow-belly and beans.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter IV
+                   John Searles and His Lake of Ooze
+
+
+Actually the first discovery of borax in Death Valley was made by
+Isadore Daunet in 1875, five years before Winters’ discovery. Daunet had
+left Panamint City when it was apparent that town was through forever
+and with six of his friends was en route to new diggings in Arizona.
+
+He was a seasoned, hardy adventurer and risked a short cut across Death
+Valley in mid-summer. Running out of water, his party killed a burro,
+drank its blood; but the deadly heat beat them down. Indians came across
+one of the thirst-crazed men and learned that Daunet and others were
+somewhere about. They found Daunet and two companions. The others
+perished.
+
+When Daunet heard of the Winters sale five years later, like Rosie
+Winters he remembered the white stuff about the water, to which the
+Indians had taken him. He hurried back and in 1880 filed upon mining
+claims amounting to 260 acres. He started at once a refining plant which
+he called Eagle Borax Works and began operating one year before Old
+Harmony began to boil borax in 1881. Daunet’s product however, was of
+inferior grade and unprofitable and work was soon abandoned. The
+unpredictable happened and dark days fell upon borax and William T.
+Coleman.
+
+In 1888 the advocates of free trade had a field day when the bill
+authored by Roger Q. Mills of Texas became the law of the land and borax
+went on the free list. The empire of Coleman tumbled in a financial
+scare—attributed by Coleman to a banker who had falsely undervalued
+Coleman’s assets after a report by a borax expert who betrayed him. “My
+assets,” wrote Coleman, “were $4,400,000. My debts $2,000,000.” No
+person but Coleman lost a penny.
+
+But Borax Smith was never one to surrender without a fight and organized
+the Pacific Coast Borax Company to take over the property and the
+success of that company justifies the faith and the integrity of
+Coleman.
+
+Marketing the borax presented a problem in transportation even more
+difficult than it did in Tibet. At first it was scraped from the flat
+surface of the valley where it looked like alkali. It was later
+discovered in ledge form in the foothills of the Funeral Mountains. The
+sight of this discovery was called Monte Blanco—now almost a forgotten
+name.
+
+The borax was boiled in tanks and after crystallization was hauled by
+mule team across one hundred and sixty-five miles of mountainous desert
+at a pace of fifteen miles per day—if there were no accidents—or an
+average of twenty days for the round trip. The summer temperatures in
+the cooler hours of the night were 112 degrees; in the day, 120 to 134
+(the highest ever recorded). There were only four water holes on the
+route. Hence, water had to be hauled for the team.
+
+The borax was hauled to Daggett and Mojave and thence shipped to
+Alameda, California, to be refined. Charles Bennett, a rancher from
+Pahrump Valley, was among the first to contract the hauling of the raw
+product.
+
+In 1883 J. W. S. Perry, superintendent of the borax company, decided the
+company should own its freighting service and under his direction the
+famous 20 mule team borax wagons with the enormous wheels were designed.
+Orders were given for ten wagons. Each weighed 7800 pounds. Two of these
+wagons formed a train, the load being 40,000 pounds. To the second wagon
+was attached a smaller one with a tank holding 1200 gallons of water.
+
+“I’d leave around midnight,” Ed Stiles said. “Generally 110 or 112
+degrees.”
+
+The first hauls of these wagons were to Mojave, with overnight stations
+every sixteen miles. Thirty days were required for the round trip.
+
+In the Eighties a prospector in the then booming Calico Mountains,
+between Barstow and Yermo discovered an ore that puzzled him. He showed
+it to others and though the bustling town of Calico was filled with
+miners from all parts of the world, none could identify it. Under the
+blow torch the crystalline surface crumbled. Out of curiosity he had it
+assayed. It proved to be calcium borate and was the world’s first
+knowledge of borax in that form. Previously it had been found in the
+form of “cotton ball.” The Pacific Coast Borax Company acquired the
+deposits; named the ore Colemanite in honor of W. T. Coleman.
+
+Operations in Death Valley were suspended and transferred to the new
+deposit, which saved a ten to fifteen days’ haul besides providing a
+superior product. The deposit was exhausted however, in the early part
+of the century when Colemanite was discovered in the Black Mountains and
+the first mine—the Lila C. began operations.
+
+It is a bit ironical that during the depression of the Thirties, two
+prospectors who neither knew nor cared anything about borax were poking
+around Kramer in relatively flat country in sight of the paved highway
+between Barstow and Mojave when they found what is believed to be the
+world’s largest deposit of borax.
+
+It was a good time for bargain hunters and was acquired by the Pacific
+Coast Borax Company and there in a town named Boron, all its borax is
+now produced.
+
+Even before Aaron Winters or Isadore Daunet, John Searles was shipping
+borax out of Death Valley country. With his brother Dennis, member of
+the George party of 1861, Searles had returned and was developing gold
+and silver claims in the Slate Range overlooking a slimy marsh. They had
+a mill ready for operation when the Indians, then making war on the
+whites of Inyo county destroyed it with fire. A man of outstanding
+courage, Searles remained to recuperate his losses. He had read about
+the Trona deposits first found in the Nile Valley and was reminded of it
+when he put some of the water from the marsh in a vessel to boil and use
+for drinking. Later he noticed the formation of crystals and then
+suspecting borax he went to San Francisco with samples and sought
+backing. He found a promoter who after examining the samples, told him,
+“If the claims are what these samples indicate, I can get all the money
+you need....”
+
+An analysis was made showing borax.
+
+“But where is this stuff located?”
+
+Searles told him as definitely as he could. He was invited to remain in
+San Francisco while a company could be organized. “It will take but a
+few days....”
+
+Searles explained that he hadn’t filed on the ground and preferred to go
+back and protect the claim.
+
+The suave promoter brushed his excuse aside. “Little chance of anybody’s
+going into that God forsaken hole.” He called an associate. “Take Mr.
+Searles in charge and show him San Francisco....”
+
+Not a rounder, Searles bored quickly with night life. His funds ran low.
+He asked the loan of $25.
+
+“Certainly....” His host stepped into an adjacent office, returning
+after a moment to say the cashier was out but that he had left
+instructions to give Searles whatever he wished.
+
+Searles made trip after trip to the cashier’s office but never found him
+in and becoming suspicious, he pawned his watch and hurried home,
+arriving at midnight four days later.
+
+The next morning a stranger came and something about his attire, his
+equipment, and his explanation of his presence didn’t ring true and
+Searles was wary even before the fellow, believing that Searles was
+still in San Francisco announced that he had been sent to find a man
+named Searles to look over some borax claims. “Do you know where they
+are?”
+
+Searles thought quickly. He had not as yet located his monuments nor
+filed a notice. He pointed down the valley. “They’re about 20 miles
+ahead....”
+
+The fellow went on his way and before he was out of sight, Searles was
+staking out the marsh and with one of the most colorful of Death Valley
+characters, Salty Bill Parkinson, began operations in 1872. Incorporated
+under the name of San Bernardino Borax Company, the business grew and
+was later sold to Borax Smith’s Pacific Coast Borax Company.
+
+Once while Searles was away hunting grizzlies, the Indians who had
+burned his mill, raided his ranch and drove his mules across the range.
+Suspecting the Piutes, he got his rifle and two pistols.
+
+“They’ll kill you,” he was warned.
+
+“I’m going to get those mules,” Searles snapped and followed their
+tracks across the Slate Range and Panamint Valley. High in the
+overlooking mountains he came upon the Indians feasting upon one of the
+animals and was immediately attacked with bows and arrows. He killed
+seven bucks and the rest ran, but an Indian’s arrow was buried in his
+eye. He jerked the arrow out, later losing the eye, pushed on and
+recovered the rest of his mules. Thereafter the Piutes avoided Searles
+and his marsh because, they said, he possessed the “evil eye.”
+
+On the same lake where Searles began operations, the town of Trona was
+established to house the employees and processing plants of the American
+Potash and Chemical Company. It was British owned, though this ownership
+was successfully concealed in the intricate corporate structure of the
+Pacific Coast Borax Company, but later sold for twelve million dollars
+to Hollanders who left the management as they found it. During World War
+II Uncle Sam discovered that the Hollanders were stooges for German
+financiers’ Potash Cartel.
+
+The Alien Property Custodian took over and ordered the sale of the stock
+to Americans. Today it is what its name implies—an American company.
+
+From the ooze where John Searles first camped to hunt grizzly bears, is
+being taken more than 100 commercial products and every day of your life
+you use one or more of them if you eat, bathe, or wear clothes, brush
+your teeth or deal with druggist, grocer, dentist or doctor.
+
+Fearing exhaustion of the visible supply (the ooze is 70 feet deep)
+tests were made in 1917 to determine what was below. Result, supply one
+century; value two billion dollars.
+
+Here are a few things containing the product of the ooze. Fertilizer for
+your flowers, orchards, and fields. Baking soda, dyes, lubricating oils,
+paper. Ethyl gasoline, porcelain, medicines, fumigants, leathers,
+solvents, cosmetics, textiles, ceramics, chemical and pharmaceutical
+preparations.
+
+About 1300 tons of these products are shipped out every day over a
+company-owned railroad and transshipped at Searles’ Station over the
+Southern Pacific, to go finally in one form or another into every home
+in America and most of those in the entire world.
+
+The weird valley meanders southward from the lake through blown-up
+mountains gorgeously colored and grimly defiant—a trip to thrill the
+lover of the wild and rugged.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter V
+                           But Where Was God?
+
+
+For years, on the edge of the road near Tule Hole, a rough slab marked
+Jim Dayton’s grave, on which were piled the bleached bones of Dayton’s
+horses. On the board were these words: “Jas. Dayton. Died 1898.”
+
+The accuracy of the date of Dayton’s death as given on the bronze plaque
+on the monument and on the marker which it replaced, has been
+challenged. The author of this book wrote the epitaph for the monument
+and the date on it is the date which was on the original marker—an old
+ironing board that had belonged to Pauline Gower. In a snapshot made by
+the writer, the date 1898, burned into the board with a redhot poker
+shows clearly.
+
+The two men who know most about the matter, Wash Cahill and Frank
+Hilton, whom he sent to find Dayton or his body, both declared the date
+on the marker correct.
+
+The late Ed Stiles brought Dayton into Death Valley. Stiles was working
+for Jim McLaughlin (Stiles called him McGlothlin), who operated a
+freighting service with headquarters at Bishop. McLaughlin ordered
+Stiles to take a 12 mule team and report to the Eagle Borax Works in
+Death Valley. “I can’t give you any directions. You’ll just have to find
+the place.” Stiles had never been in Death Valley nor could he find
+anyone who had. It was like telling a man to start across the ocean and
+find a ship named Sally.
+
+At Bishop Creek in Owens Valley Stiles decided he needed a helper. There
+he found but one person willing to go—a youngster barely out of his
+teens—Jim Dayton.
+
+Dayton remained in Death Valley and somewhat late in life, on one of his
+trips out, romance entered. After painting an intriguing picture of the
+lotus life a girl would find at Furnace Creek, he asked the lady to
+share it with him. She promptly accepted.
+
+A few months later, the bride suggested that a trip out would make her
+love the lotus life even more and so in the summer of 1898 she tearfully
+departed. Soon she wrote Jim in effect that it hadn’t turned out as she
+had hoped. Instead, she had become reconciled to shade trees, green
+lawns, neighbors, and places to go and if he wanted to live with her
+again he would just have to abandon the Death Valley paradise.
+
+Dayton loaded his wagon with all his possessions, called his dog and
+started for Daggett.
+
+Wash Cahill, who was to become vice-president of the borax company, was
+then working at its Daggett office. Cahill received from Dayton a letter
+which he saw from the date inside and the postmark on the envelope, had
+been held somewhere for at least two weeks before it was mailed.
+
+The letter contained Dayton’s resignation and explained why Dayton was
+leaving. He had left a reliable man in temporary charge and was bringing
+his household goods; also two horses which had been borrowed at Daggett.
+
+Knowing that Dayton should have arrived in Daggett at least a week
+before the actual arrival of the letter, Cahill was alarmed and
+dispatched Frank Hilton, a teamster and handy man, and Dolph Lavares to
+see what had happened.
+
+On the roadside at Tule Hole they found Dayton’s body, his dog patiently
+guarding it. Apparently Dayton had become ill, stopped to rest. “Maybe
+the sun beat him down. Maybe his ticker jammed,” said Shorty Harris,
+“but the horses were fouled in the harness and were standing up dead.”
+
+There could be no flowers for Jim Dayton nor peal of organ. So they went
+to his wagon, loosened the shovel lashed to the coupling pole. They dug
+a hole beside the road, rolled Jim Dayton’s body into it.
+
+The widow later settled in a comfortable house in town with neighbors
+close at hand. There she was trapped by fire. While the flames were
+consuming the building a man ran up. Someone said, “She’s in that upper
+room.” The brave and daring fellow tore his way through the crowd,
+leaped through the window into a room red with flames and dragged her
+out, her clothing still afire. He laid her down, beat out the flames,
+but she succumbed.
+
+A multitude applauded the hero. A little later over in Nevada another
+multitude lynched him. Between heroism and depravity—what?
+
+Although Tule Hole has long been a landmark of Death Valley, few know
+its story and this I believe to be its first publication.
+
+One day while resting his team, Stiles noticed a patch of tules growing
+a short distance off the road and taking a shovel he walked over,
+started digging a hole on what he thought was a million to one chance of
+finding water, and thus reduce the load that had to be hauled for use
+between springs. “I hadn’t dug a foot,” he told me “before I struck
+water. I dug a ditch to let it run off and after it cleared I drank
+some, found it good and enlarged the hole.”
+
+He went on to Daggett with his load. Repairs to his wagon train required
+a week and by the time he returned five weeks had elapsed. “I stopped
+the team opposite the tules, got out and started over to look at the
+hole I’d dug. When I got within a few yards three or four naked squaw
+hags scurried into the brush. I stopped and looked away toward the
+mountains to give ’em a chance to hide. Then I noticed two Indian bucks,
+each leading a riderless horse, headed for the Panamints. Then I knew
+what had happened.”
+
+Ed Stiles was a desert man and knew his Indians. Somewhere up in a
+Panamint canyon the chief had called a powwow and when it was over the
+head men had gone from one wickiup to another and looked over all the
+toothless old crones who no longer were able to serve, yet consumed and
+were in the way. Then they had brought the horses and with two strong
+bucks to guard them, they had ridden down the canyon and out across the
+desert to the water hole. There the crones had slid to the ground. The
+bucks had dropped a sack of piñon nuts. Of course, the toothless hags
+could not crunch the nuts and even if they could, the nuts would not
+last long. Then they would have to crawl off into the scrawny brush and
+grabble for herbs or slap at grasshoppers, but these are quicker than
+palsied hands and in a little while the sun would beat them down.
+
+The rest was up to God.
+
+The distinction of driving the first 20 mule team has always been a
+matter of controversy. Over a nation-wide hook-up, the National
+Broadcasting Co. once presented a playlet based upon these conflicting
+claims. A few days afterward, at the annual Death Valley picnic held at
+Wilmington, John Delameter, a speaker, announced that he’d made
+considerable research and was prepared to name the person actually
+entitled to that honor. The crowd, including three claimants of the
+title, moved closer, their ears cupped in eager attention as Delameter
+began to speak. One of the claimants nudged my arm with a confident
+smile, whispered, “Now you’ll know....” A few feet away his rivals,
+their pale eyes fixed on the speaker, hunched forward to miss no word.
+
+Mr. Delameter said: “There were several wagons of 16 mules and who drove
+the first of these, I do not know, but I do know who drove the first 20
+mule team.”
+
+Covertly and with gleams of triumph, the claimants eyed each other as
+Delameter paused to turn a page of his manuscript. Then with a loud
+voice he said: “I drove it myself!”
+
+May God have mercy on his soul.
+
+A few days later I rang the doorbell at the ranch house of Ed Stiles,
+almost surrounded by the city of San Bernardino. As no one answered, I
+walked to the rear, and across a field of green alfalfa saw a man
+pitching hay in a temperature of 120 degrees. It was Stiles who in 1876
+was teaming in Bodie—toughest of the gold towns.
+
+I sat down in the shade of his hay. He stood in the sun. I said, “Mr.
+Stiles, do you know who drove the first 20 mule team in Death Valley?”
+
+He gave me a kind of _et-tu, Brute_ look and smiled.
+
+“In the fall of 1882 I was driving a 12 mule team from the Eagle Borax
+Works to Daggett. I met a man on a buckboard who asked if the team was
+for sale. I told him to write Mr. McLaughlin. It took 15 days to make
+the round trip and when I got back I met the same man. He showed me a
+bill of sale for the team and hired me to drive it. He had an eight mule
+team and a new red wagon, driven by a fellow named Webster. The man in
+the buckboard was Borax Smith.
+
+“Al Maynard, foreman for Smith and Coleman, was at work grubbing out
+mesquite to plant alfalfa on what is now Furnace Creek Ranch. Maynard
+told me to take the tongue out of the new wagon and put a trailer tongue
+in it. ‘In the morning,’ he said, ‘hitch it to your wagon. Put a water
+wagon behind your trailer, hook up those eight mules with your team and
+go to Daggett.’
+
+“That was the first time that a 20 mule team was driven out of Death
+Valley. Webster was supposed to swamp for me. But when he saw his new
+red wagon and mules hitched up with my outfit, he walked into the office
+and quit his job.”
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter VI
+                          Death Valley Geology
+
+
+The pleasure of your trip through the Big Sink will be enhanced if you
+know something about the structural features which are sure to arrest
+your attention.
+
+For undetermined ages Death Valley was desert. Then rivers and lakes.
+Rivers dried. Lakes evaporated. Again, desert. It is believed that in
+thousands of years there have been no changes other than those caused by
+earthquakes and erosion.
+
+It is no abuse of the superlative to say that the foremost authority
+upon Death Valley geology is Doctor Levi Noble, who has studied it under
+the auspices of the U.S. Geological Survey since 1917. He has ridden
+over more of it than anyone and because of his studies, earlier
+conclusions of geologists are scrapped today.
+
+From a pamphlet published by the American Geological Society with the
+permission of the U. S. Dept. of Interior, now out of print, I quote a
+few passages which Doctor Noble, its author, once described to me as
+“dull reading, even for scientists.”
+
+“The southern Death Valley region contains rocks of at least eight
+geologic systems whose aggregate thickness certainly exceeds 45,000 feet
+for the stratified rocks alone.”
+
+“The dissected playa or lake beds in Amargosa Valley between Shoshone
+and Tecopa contain elephant remains that are Pleistocene....”
+
+“Rainbow Mountain is one of the geological show places of the Death
+Valley region.... Here the Amargosa river has cut a canyon 1000 feet
+deep.... The mountain is made up of thrust slices of Cambrian and
+pre-Cambrian rocks alternating with slices of Tertiary rocks, all of
+which dip in general about 30 to 40 degrees eastward, but are also
+anticlinally arched.”
+
+“None of the geologic terms in common use appear exactly to fit this
+mosaic of large tightly packed individual blocks of different ages
+occupying a definite zone above a major thrust fault.”
+
+The significant feature is that a stratum that began with creation may
+lie above one that is an infant in the age of rock—a puzzle that will
+engage men of Levi Noble’s talents for years to come. But one doesn’t
+have to be a member of the American Geological Society to find thrills
+in other gripping features.
+
+Throughout the area south of Shoshone are many hot springs containing
+boron and fluorine—some with traces of radium. The water is believed to
+come from a buried river. The source of other hot springs in the Death
+Valley area is unknown.
+
+More startling features were related to Shorty Harris and me at
+Bennett’s Well in the bottom of Death Valley where we met one of
+Shorty’s friends. Lanky and baked brown, in each wrinkle of his face the
+sun had etched a smile. “Shorty,” he said, “yachts will be sailing
+around here some day. There’s a passage to the sea, sure as hell.”
+
+“What makes you think so?” Shorty asked.
+
+“Those salt pools. Just come from there. I was watching the crystals;
+felt the ground move a little. Pool started sloshing. A sea serpent with
+eyes big as a wagon wheel and teeth full of kelp stuck his head up.
+Where’d he come from? No kelp in this valley. That prove anything?”
+
+Ubehebe Crater is believed to have resulted from the only major change
+in the topography of the valley since its return to desert, but John
+Delameter, old time freighter, thought geologists didn’t know what they
+were talking about. “When I first saw Saratoga Spring I could straddle
+it. Full of fish four inches long. Next time, three springs and a lake.
+Fish shrunk to one inch and different shaped head.”
+
+Actually these fish are the degenerate descendants of the larger fish
+that lived in the streams and lakes that once watered Death Valley—an
+interesting study in the survival of species. The real name, _Cyprinodon
+Macularius_, is too large a mouthful for the natives so they are called
+desert sardines, though they are in reality a small killifish.
+
+Dan Breshnahan, in charge of a road crew working between Furnace Creek
+Inn and Stove Pipe Well, ordered some of the men to dig a hole to sink
+some piles. Two feet beneath a hard crust they encountered muck. When
+they hit the pile with a sledge it would bounce back. Dan put a board
+across the top. With a man on each end of the board, the rebound was
+prevented and the pile driven into hard earth. “I’m convinced that under
+that road is a lake of mire and Lord help the fellow who goes through,”
+Dan said.
+
+A heavily loaded 20 mule team wagon driven by Delameter broke the
+surface of this ooze and two days were required to get it out. To test
+the depth, he tied an anvil to his bridle rein and let it down. The lead
+line of a 20 mule team is 120 feet long. It sank (he said) the length of
+the line and reached no bottom.
+
+On Ash Meadows, a few miles from Death Valley Junction and on the side
+of a mountain is what is known as The Devil’s Hole which it is said has
+no bottom. True or false, none has ever been found.
+
+A steep trail leads down to the water which will then be over your head.
+Indians will tell you that a squaw fell into this hole within the memory
+of the living and that she was sucked to the bottom and came out at Big
+Spring several miles distant. The latter is a large hole in the middle
+of the desert and from its throat, also bottomless, pours a large volume
+of clear, warm water.
+
+“Explored?” shouted Dad Fairbanks one day when a white-haired prospector
+declared every foot of Death Valley had been worked over. “It isn’t
+scratched!”
+
+Only the day before (in 1934), Dr. Levi Noble had been working in the
+mountains overlooking the valley on the east rim. Through his field
+glasses he saw a formation that looked like a natural bridge. When he
+returned to Shoshone he phoned Harry Gower, Pacific Borax Co. official
+at Furnace Creek of his discovery and suggested that Gower investigate.
+
+Since Furnace Creek Inn wanted such attractions for its guests, Gower
+went immediately and almost within rifle shot of a road used since the
+Seventies, he found the bridge.
+
+That too is Death Valley—land of continual surprise.
+
+Death Valley is the hottest spot in North America. The U.S. Army, in a
+test of clothing suitable for hot weather made some startling
+discoveries. According to records, on one day in every seven years the
+temperature reaches 180 on the valley floor. But five feet above ground
+where official temperatures are recorded the thermometer drops 55
+degrees to 125.
+
+The highest temperature ever recorded was 134 at Furnace Creek
+Ranch—only two degrees below the world’s record in Morocco. In 1913, the
+week of July 7-14, the temperature never got below 127. Official
+recording differs little from that of Arabia, India, and lower
+California, but the duration is longer.
+
+Left in the sun, water in a pail of ordinary size will evaporate in an
+hour. Bodies decompose two or three hours after rigor mortis begins but
+some have been found in certain areas at higher altitudes dried like
+leather. A rattlesnake dropped into a bucket and set in the sun will die
+in 20 minutes.
+
+The evaporation of salt from the body is rapid and many prospectors
+swallow a mouthful of common salt before going out into a killing sun.
+
+One of the pitiable features of death on the desert is that bodies are
+found with fingers worn to the bone from frantic digging and often
+beneath the cadaver is water at two feet.
+
+There is also legendary weather for outside consumption. Told to see Joe
+Ryan as a source of dependable information, a tourist approached Joe and
+asked what kind of temperature one would encounter in the valley.
+
+“Heat is always exaggerated,” said Joe. “Of course it gets a little warm
+now and then. Hottest I ever saw was in August when I crossed the valley
+with Mike Lane. I was walking ahead when I heard Mike coughing. I looked
+around. Seemed to be choking and I went back. Mike held out his palm and
+in it was a gold nugget and Mike was madder’n hell. ‘My teeth melted,’
+Mike wailed. ‘I’m going to kill that dentist. He told me they would
+stand heat up to 500 degrees.’”
+
+I met an engaging liar at Bradbury Well one day. He was gloriously drunk
+and was telling the group about him that he was a great grand-son of the
+fabulous Paul Bunyan.
+
+“Of course,” he said, “Gramp was a mighty man, but he was dumb at that.
+One time I saw him put a handful of pebbles in his mouth and blow ’em
+one at a time at a flock of wild geese flying a mile high. He got every
+goose, but how did he end up? Not so good. He straddled the Pacific
+ocean one day and prowled around in China, and saw a cross-eyed
+pigeon-toed midget with buck teeth. Worse, she had a temper that would
+melt pig-iron.
+
+“Gramp went nuts over her. What happened? He married her. She had some
+trained fleas. If Gramp got sassy, she put fleas in his ears and ants in
+his pants and stood by, laughing at him, while he scratched himself to
+death. Hell of an end for Gramp, wasn’t it?”
+
+In the late fall, winter, and early spring perfect days are the rule and
+if you are among those who like uncharted trails, do not hurry. Then
+when night comes you will climb a moonbeam and play among the stars. You
+will learn too, that life goes on away from box scores, radio puns, and
+girls with a flair for Veuve Cliquot.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter VII
+                          Indians of the Area
+
+
+The Indians of the Death Valley country were dog eaters—both those of
+Shoshone and Piute origin. Both had undoubtedly degenerated as a result
+of migrations. The Shoshones (Snakes) had originally lived in Idaho,
+Oregon, and Washington. The Piutes in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada.
+
+The true blood connection of coast Indians may well be a matter of
+dispute. “Almost every 15 or 20 leagues you’ll find a distinct dialect,”
+was said of California Indians. (Boscana in Robinson’s Life in
+California, p. 220.) Most of them were hardly above the animal in
+intelligence or morality. Though the Death Valley Indians are called
+Shoshone and Piutes, to what extent their blood justifies the
+classification is the white man’s guess.
+
+Those whom Dr. French found in the Panamint said they had no tribal
+name. Many California tribes were given names by the whites, these names
+being the American’s interpretation of a sound uttered by one group to
+designate another. “They do not seem to have any names for themselves.”
+(Schoolcraft’s Arch., Vol. 3.)
+
+All seem to agree however, that the farther north the Indian lived, the
+more intelligent he was and the better his physique—which would indicate
+a relation to the better diet in the lush, well-watered and game-filled
+valleys and foothills. Some of the women are described by early writers
+as “exceedingly pretty.” Others, “flat-faced and pudgy.” “The Indians in
+the northern portion ... are vastly superior in stature and intellect to
+those found in the southern part.” (Hubbard, Golden Era, 1856.)
+
+Certainly those found in Death Valley country reflected in their persons
+and in their character the niggardly land and the struggle for survival
+upon it. They were treacherous as its terrain. Cruel as its cactus.
+Tenacious as its stunted life.
+
+It is interesting to note the range of opinion and the conclusions drawn
+by earlier travelers.
+
+Of the Shoshones: “Very rigid in their morals.” (Remi and Brenchley’s
+Journal, Vol. 1, p. 85.)
+
+“They of all men are lowest, lying in a state of semi-torpor in holes in
+the ground in winter and in spring, crawling forth and eating grass on
+their hands and knees until able to regain their feet ... living in
+filth ... no bridles on their passions ... surely room for no missing
+links between them and brutes.” (Bancroft’s Native Races, Vol. 1, p.
+440.)
+
+“It is common practice ... to gamble away their wives and children.... A
+husband will prostitute his wife to a stranger for a trifling present.”
+(Ibid. ch. 4, Vol. 1.)
+
+“Our Piute has a peculiar way of getting a foretaste of connubial
+bliss—cohabiting experimentally with his intended for two or three days
+previous to the nuptial ceremony, at the end of which time either party
+can stay further proceedings to indulge further trials until a companion
+more congenial is found.” (S. F. Medical Press, Vol. 3, p. 155. See
+also, Lewis and Clark’s Travels, p. 307.)
+
+“The Piutes are the most degraded and least intellectual Indians known
+to trappers.” (Farnham’s Life, p. 336.)
+
+“Pah-utes are undoubtedly the most docile Indians on the continent.”
+(Indian Affairs Report, 1859, p. 374.)
+
+“Honest and trustworthy, but lazy and dirty,” is said of the Shoshones.
+(Remi and Brenchley’s Journal, p. 123.) Some ethnologists declare they
+cannot be identified with any other American tribe.
+
+Wives were purchased, cash or credit. Polygamy prevailed. Unmarried
+women belonged to all, but Gibbs says women bewailed their virginity for
+three days prior to marriage. “They allow but one wife.” (Prince in
+California Farmer, Oct. 18, 1861.)
+
+Husbands were allowed to kill their mothers-in-law. The heart of a
+valiant enemy killed in battle was eaten raw or cut into pieces and made
+into soup. Women captives of other tribes were ravished, sold or kept as
+slaves. Some Southern California tribes sold their women and
+occasionally tribes were found without a single squaw.
+
+“They are exceedingly virtuous.” (Remi and Brenchley’s Journal, Vol. 1,
+pp. 1-23-8.)
+
+“Given to sensual excesses.” (Farnham’s Travel, p. 62.)
+
+“The Nevada Shoshones are the most pure and uncorrupted aborigines on
+the continent ... scrupulously clean ... chaste.” (Prince, California
+Farmer, Oct. 18, 1861.)
+
+Thus the Indian who came or was driven to this wasteland evoked
+conflicting opinions and the real picture is vague.
+
+The lowest of California Indians is believed to have been the Digger,
+so-called because he existed chiefly upon roots and lived in burrows of
+his own making, but his isolation by ethnologists is not convincing. He
+was found around Shoshone by Fremont and Kit Carson and inhabited
+valleys to the north and west, but in the Death Valley region the Piute
+and Shoshone were dominant.
+
+Blood vengeance was deep-rooted. Found with the Indian collection of Dr.
+Simeon Lee at Carson City was a revealing manuscript that tells how
+swiftly it struck.
+
+Mudge rode up to another Indian standing on a Carson City street and
+without warning shot him dead and galloped away. The dead man had two
+cousins working at Lake Tahoe. The murder had occurred at 9:30 a.m. and
+by some means of communication unknown to whites, they were on Mudge’s
+trail within two hours and had found him. Mudge promptly killed them
+both and fled again. Sheriff Ulric engaged Captain Johnnie, a Piute, to
+track the slayer. He found Mudge’s lair, but Mudge was a sure shot, well
+protected and to rush him meant certain death. The posse decided to keep
+watch until thirst or hunger forced him out. “Me fix um,” said Captain
+Johnnie.
+
+He disappeared, but soon returned with an enormous amount of tempting
+food which he contrived to place within easy reach of Mudge. “Him see
+moppyass (food). Eat bellyful and fall down asleep.”
+
+That is exactly what happened and old Demi-John, the father of the
+murdered boys crawled stealthily through the sage and with his hunting
+knife severed the head from the sleeping Mudge’s body.
+
+In Mono county Piutes killed the Chinese owner of a cafe and fed the
+carcass to their dogs. In court they blandly confessed and justified it,
+claiming the Chinaman had killed and pickled one of their missing
+tribesmen and then sold and served to them portions of the victim as
+“corned beef and cabbage.”
+
+For the desert Indian life was raw to the bone. He was an unemotional,
+fatalistic creature as ruthless as the land. In the struggle to live, he
+had acquired endurance and cunning. He knew his desert—its moods, its
+stingy dole, its chary tolerance of life. He knew where the mountain
+sheep hid, the screw-bean grew and the fat lizard crawled. He knew where
+the drop of water seeped from the lone hill. He combed the lower levels
+of the range for chuckwalla, edible snakes, horned toads—anything with
+flesh; stuffed the kill into bags and preserved them for later use. He
+made flour from mesquite beans; stored piñons, roots, herbs in his
+desperate fight to survive, and anything that crawled, flew, or walked
+was food. I have seen a squaw squatted beside the carcass of a dog,
+picking out the firmer flesh.
+
+When the Piute came to a spring, the first thing he did was to look
+about for a flat rock which he was sure to find if a member of his tribe
+had previously been there. Kneeling, he would skim the water from the
+surface and dash it upon this rock. Then he smelled the rock. If there
+was an odor of onion or garlic, he knew it contained arsenic and was
+deadly. Naturally, he would be concerned about another water hole. He
+had only to look about him. He would find partially imbedded in the
+earth several stones fixed in the form of a circle not entirely closed.
+The opening pointed in the direction of the next water. The distance to
+that water was indicated by stones inside the circle. There he would
+find for example, three stones pointing toward the opening. He knew that
+each of those stones indicated one “sleep.” Therefore he would have to
+sleep three times before he got there. In other words, it was three
+days’ journey.
+
+But which of these trails leading to the water should he take? There
+might be several trails converging at the water hole. The matter was
+decided for him. He walked along each of those trails for a few feet.
+Beside one of them he would find an oblong stone. By its shape and
+position he knew that was the trail that led to the next water.
+
+Under such circumstances a man would perhaps wonder if upon arrival at
+the next water hole he would find that water also unfit to use. The
+information was at hand. If, upon top of that oblong stone he found a
+smaller stone placed crosswise and white in color, he knew the water
+would be good water. If a piece of black malpai was there instead of the
+white stone, he knew the next water would be poison also.
+
+Not infrequently he would find other information at the water hole if
+there were boulders about, or chalky cliffs upon which the Indian could
+place his picture writing. If he saw the crude drawing of a lone man, it
+indicated that the land about was uninhabited except by hunters, but if
+upon the pictured torso were marks indicating the breasts of a woman, he
+knew there was a settlement about and he would find squaws and children
+and something to eat.
+
+Frequently other information was left for this wayfaring Indian. Under
+conspicuous stones about, he might find a feather with a hole punched
+through it or one that was notched. The former indicated that one had
+been there who had killed his man. The notch indicated that he had cut a
+throat.
+
+Since there was a difference between the moccasins of Indian tribes, the
+dust about would often inform him whether the buck who went before was
+friend or enemy.
+
+Like all American aborigines, the Piute had his medicine man, but the
+manner of his choosing is not clear. The one selected had to accept the
+role, though the honor never thrilled him, because he knew that when the
+score of death was three against him he would join his lost patients in
+the happy hereafter. Occasionally he was stoned to death by the
+relatives of the first lost patient and with the approval of the rest of
+the tribe. Not infrequently it was believed the medicine man’s departed
+spirit then entered the medicine man’s kin and they were also butchered
+or stoned to death.
+
+
+Note. Early writers refer to Pau Eutahs, Pah Utes, Paiuches, Pyutes, and
+Paiutes. The word Piute is believed to mean true Ute.
+
+Bancroft claimed the Piutes and Pah Utes were separate tribes, the
+latter being the Trout or Ochi Indians of Walker River; the former the
+Tule (or Toy) Indians of Pyramid Lake.
+
+There was an undetermined number of branches of the original Utah stock.
+Besides the above, there was another tribe called by other Indians,
+Cozaby Piutes, Cozaby being the Indian name of a worm that literally
+covered the shores of Mono Lake. This worm was a principal food of the
+tribe.
+
+Though “Piute” is the spelling justifiably used throughout the region,
+“Pahute” was chosen a few years ago by a group of scholars as the
+preferable form.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter VIII
+                    Desert Gold. Too Many Fractions
+
+
+On the Nevada desert wind-whipped Mount Davidson (or Sun Mountain)
+guided the Forty Niners across the flat Washoe waste. At its foot they
+rested and cursed it because it impeded their progress to the California
+goldfields. Ten years later they rushed back because it had become the
+fabulous Comstock, said to have produced more than $880,000,000, though
+the Nevada State bureau of mines places the figure at $347,892,336. The
+truth lies somewhere between.
+
+“Pancake” Comstock had acquired, more by bluff and cunning than labor,
+title to gold claims others had discovered and cursed a “blue stuff”
+that slowed the recovery of visible particles of gold. Later the “blue
+stuff” was blessed as incredibly rich silver. A mountain of gold and
+silver side by side. It just couldn’t be.
+
+A new crop of overnight millionaires. New feet feeling for the first
+step on the social ladder. The Mackays, the Floods, the Fairs, the
+Hearsts.
+
+All this was more like current than twenty year old history to Jim
+Butler on May 18, 1900, when his hungry burro strayed up a hill in
+search of grass. Soon a city stood where the burro ate and soon
+adventurers were poking around in the canyons of Death Valley, 66 miles
+south.
+
+Jim Butler, more rancher than gold hunter was a likable happy-go-lucky
+fellow, who could strum a banjo and sing a song. But when he found the
+burro in Sawtooth Pass he saw a ledge which looked as if it might have
+values. Born in El Dorado county in California in 1855, Butler was more
+or less gold conscious, but unexcited he stuck a few samples in his
+pocket and went on after the burro.
+
+A story survives which states that a half-breed Shoshone Indian known as
+Charles Fisherman had told Butler of the existence of the ore without
+disclosing its location and that Butler was actually searching for it
+when the burro strayed. The preponderance of evidence, however,
+indicates that Butler was en route to Belmont to see his friend, Tasker
+Oddie, who was batching there in a cabin. He gave Oddie one of the
+samples and after his visit, left for home.
+
+Oddie laid the sample on a window sill and forgot it.
+
+In Klondike a few days later, Butler showed another sample to Frank
+Higgs, an assayer. Half in jest he said: “Frank, I’ve no money to pay
+for an assay, but I’ll cut you in on this stuff if it shows anything.”
+
+Higgs looked at the sample and returned it to Butler: “Just a waste of
+time. Forget it.”
+
+Later in Belmont Henry Broderick, a prospector dropped in for a visit
+with Oddie and noticed the sample Butler had given Oddie and looked it
+over. “This ore has good values,” he told Oddie. “It’s worth
+investigating.” Oddie knew that Broderick’s opinion was not to be
+underrated.
+
+Oddie was a young lawyer with little practice and a salary of $100 a
+year as District Attorney. Belmont had a population of 100. Oddie didn’t
+have two dollars to risk, but he took the sample to W. C. Gayhart at
+Austin and offered Gayhart a fractional interest if he’d assay it. With
+few customers, Gayhart took a chance.
+
+The ore showed values and Oddie was mildly excited. Butler lived 35
+miles away in wild, difficult country and Oddie wrote him, enclosing the
+assay. Several weeks passed before Butler received the letter. Then
+Butler and his wife returned to Belmont only to find Oddie could not go
+with them. Jim and Mrs. Butler now returned home, loaded provisions,
+tools, and camp equipment in a wagon and three days later, Aug. 26,
+1900, they reached Sawtooth Pass and made camp.
+
+The Butlers staked out eight claims. Jim took for himself the one he
+considered best. He named it The Desert Queen. Mrs. Butler chose another
+and called it Mizpah. Jim located another for Oddie and named it Burro.
+The best proved to be Mrs. Butler’s Mizpah.
+
+Returning to Belmont, they found Oddie at home. The matter of recording
+the location notices had to be attended to. “That will cost ten or
+fifteen dollars,” Butler said. Neither of them had any money. Wils
+Brougher was recorder of Nye county and Oddie’s friend, so Oddie made a
+proposition to Brougher. “If you’ll pay the recorder’s fees we’ll give
+you an eighth.”
+
+Brougher said, “Nye county is one of the largest counties in the United
+States, but there are only 400 people in it and I’m not getting many
+fees these days. Leave ’em.”
+
+After they’d gone Brougher looked at the assay Oddie had left and
+decided to take a chance. The setup was now: Butler and his wife
+five-eighths, Oddie, Brougher, and Gayhart, one-eighth each.
+
+They managed to pool resources and obtained $25 in cash to provide
+material and provisions.
+
+Brougher, Oddie, Jim, and Mrs. Butler set out in October, 1900. Mrs.
+Butler did the cooking while the men dug, drilled, and blasted two tons
+of ore. The ore was sacked and hauled 150 miles to Austin and shipped to
+a San Francisco smelter. The returns showed high values but still they
+had a major problem—money to develop the claims. Because the country had
+been prospected and pronounced worthless, men of millions were not
+backing a banjo-picking rancher and a young lawyer with no money and few
+clients. The answer was leasing to idle miners willing to gamble muscle
+against money. The venture made many of them rich. The others recovered
+more than wages. As the leases expired the owners took them over.
+
+The camp where Mrs. Butler cooked became the site of the Mizpah Hotel
+and the City of Tonopah and the hill where the burro strayed produced
+many millions.
+
+There are several versions of the Butler discovery and the writer does
+not pretend that his own is the true one. He can only say that he knew
+many of those who were first on the scene and some of those who held the
+first and best leases, and his conclusions are based on their personal
+narratives.
+
+Oddie became one of the moguls of mining, Nevada’s governor, and a
+senator of the United States.
+
+Twenty-six miles south of Tonopah was a place known as Grandpa, so named
+because there were always a few old prospectors camped at the water hole
+known as Rabbit Springs. These patriarchs had combed the desert about,
+for years without success.
+
+Al Myers, a prospector working on a hill nearby, came to the Grandpa
+Spring to fill a barrel of water and found his friend, Shorty Harris,
+who had been camping there, packing his burros to leave. “Better hang
+around, Shorty,” Al advised. “I’m getting color.”
+
+“Luck to you,” Shorty laughed. “But any place where these old grandpas
+can’t find color, is no place for me.”
+
+In six weeks Myers and Tom Murphy made the big strike (1903) and Grandpa
+became Goldfield—one of the West’s most spectacular camps. Some of the
+more promising claims of Goldfield were leased, the most valuable being
+that of Hays and Monette, on the Mohawk. In 106 days the lease produced
+$5,000,000.
+
+Out of the Mohawk one car was shipped which yielded over $579,000 and
+ore in all of the better mines was so rich that Goldfield quickly became
+the high-grader’s paradise. Though wages at Tonopah were twice those
+paid at Goldfield, miners deserted the older camp for the lower wage and
+made more than the difference by concealing high-grade in the cuffs of
+their overalls or in other ingenious receptacles built into their
+clothing. Miners and muckers took the girls of their choice out of
+honkies and installed them in cottages. More than one of these gorgeous
+creatures, having found her man in her boom-town crib, later ascended
+life’s grand stairway to live virtuously and bravely in a Wilshire
+mansion or a swank hotel.
+
+To stop the stealing, a change room was installed but many had already
+secured themselves against want. A wealthy resident of California once
+told me: “With the proceeds of the high-grade I took home I built
+rentals that led to bank connections and more lucky investments.
+Everybody was doing it.”
+
+Tex Rickard, a gambler and saloon man, already known in Alaska and San
+Francisco for spectacular adventures, here began his career as a sports
+promoter in the ill-advised Jeffries-Johnson fight.
+
+One morning his Great Northern had more than its usual crowd. Men stood
+three deep at the bar, games were busy and Billy Murray, the cashier was
+rushed. It was not unusual for desert men to leave their money with
+Murray. He would tag and sack it and toss it aside, but today there was
+a steady stream being poked at him. Finally it got in his way and he had
+it taken through the alley to the bank, but the deluge continued.
+
+When it again got in his way, his assistant having stepped out, Billy
+took it to the bank himself. There he learned the reason for the flood
+of money. A run was being made on the John S. Cook bank. He satisfied
+himself that the bank was safe and returned to his cage. As fast as the
+money came in the front door, it went out the back and Billy Murray thus
+saved the bank and the town from collapse.
+
+A resourceful youngster who knew that wherever men recklessly acquire,
+they recklessly spend, dropped in from Oregon, got a job in Tom
+Kendall’s Tonopah Club as a dealer. Good looking and likable, he made
+friends, took over the gambling concession and was soon taking over
+Goldfield and the state of Nevada. He was George Wingfield, who, when
+offered a seat in the United States Senate, calmly declined it.
+
+Goldfield is only 40 miles from the northern boundary of Death Valley
+National Monument and was in bonanza when Shorty Harris walked into the
+Great Northern saloon. “I’ve been drinking gulch likker,” he told the
+bartender. “Give me the best in the house.”
+
+The bartender reached for a bottle. “This is 100 proof 14 year old
+bourbon.”
+
+Shorty drank it, laid a goldpiece on the bar. “Good stuff. I’ll have
+another.”
+
+“You must be celebrating,” the bartender said.
+
+“You guessed it,” Shorty said and laid a piece of high-grade beside his
+glass. “I’ve got more gold where that came from than Uncle Sam’s got in
+the mint.”
+
+A faro dealer noticed the ore and picked it up. “Good looking rock,” he
+said and passed it to a promoter standing by. In a moment a crowd had
+gathered. “Looks like Breyfogle quartz,” the promoter said and led
+Shorty aside. “I can make you a million on this. Want to sell?”
+
+“Not on your life,” Shorty said, but after pressure and a few drinks, he
+agreed to part with an eighth interest. The deal closed, he left to see
+friends around town. He found each of them in a barroom. News of his
+strike had preceded him and each time he laid the ore on the bar someone
+wanted an interest. Someone called him aside and someone bought the
+drinks.
+
+Within an hour every fortune hunter in Goldfield was looking for Shorty
+Harris, each believing Shorty had found the Lost Breyfogle.
+
+When he left town, weaving in the dust of his burros, sixteen men wished
+him well, for each had a piece of paper conveying a one-eighth interest
+in Shorty’s claim.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter IX
+                       Romance Strikes the Parson
+
+
+Scorning Al Myers’s advice to locate a claim on the Goldfield hill,
+Shorty Harris headed south, prospecting as he went until he reached
+Monte Beatty’s ranch where he camped with Beatty, a squaw man. “I’m
+going to look at a rhyolite formation in the hills four miles west. It
+looks good—that hill,” Shorty told him.
+
+“Forget it,” Beatty said, “I’ve combed every inch.”
+
+With faith in Beatty’s knowledge of the country, he abandoned the trip
+and crossed the Amargosa desert to Daylight Springs, found the country
+full of amateur prospectors excited by the discoveries at Tonopah and
+Goldfield. After a few weeks he decided there was nothing worthwhile to
+be found. “I had a hunch Beatty could be wrong about that formation and
+decided to go back.”
+
+He was well outfitted and with five burros and more than enough
+provisions, was ready to go when, out of the bush came a cleancut
+youngster—a novice who had brought his wife along.
+
+“Shorty,” he said, “we’re out of grub. Can you spare any?”
+
+“Sure. But you’d be better off to go with me. I have enough grub for all
+of us.”
+
+Ed Cross had all to gain; nothing to lose by following an experienced
+prospector.
+
+At a water hole known as Buck Springs they made camp. Within an hour
+they went up a canyon, each working a side of it. Shorty broke a piece
+of quartz from an outcropping; saw shades of turquoise and jade. “Come
+a-runnin’ Ed,” he shouted. “We’ve got the world by the tail and a
+downhill pull.”
+
+They staked out the discovery claims. “How many more should we locate?”
+Cross asked.
+
+“None. Give the other fellow a chance. If this is as good as we think,
+we’ve got all the money we’ll ever need. If it isn’t and the other
+fellow makes a good showing it will help us sell this one.”
+
+They went to Goldfield. Shorty showed the sample to Bob Montgomery, an
+old friend. Bob was skeptical. But in an hour the news was out and
+Goldfield en masse headed for the new strike. Those, who couldn’t get
+conveyances, walked. Some pulled burro carts across the desert. Some
+started out with wheelbarrows. Jack Salsbury began to move lumber.
+Others brought merchandise, barrels of liquor. Everything to build a
+town.
+
+“Specimens of my ore,” Shorty said, “were used by Tiffany for ring
+settings, lavallieres, bracelets. It went to Paris and London. Ore
+broken from the ledge sold for $50 a pound. I must have given away
+thousands of dollars’ worth of it for souvenirs.”
+
+Overnight Rhyolite was born. Shorty bought a barrel of liquor, drove a
+row of nails around the barrel, hung tin dippers on the nails and
+invited the town to quench its thirst. Two railroads came. One, 114
+miles from Las Vegas. Another, 200 miles from Ludlow.
+
+“Two things influenced me in naming it Bullfrog,” Shorty said. “Ed had
+asked, ‘what’ll we name it?’ As I looked at the green ore in my hand, a
+frog bellowed. ‘Bullfrog,’ I said.” (One writer has stated erroneously
+that there is not a bullfrog on the desert.)
+
+The tycoons of mining and their agents appeared as if borne on magic
+carpets and in a little while men who would have turned him from their
+doors, were fawning around the little man with the golden smile and the
+ugly brawl for the Bullfrog was on—a struggle between cheap promoters
+who gave him cheap whiskey and moguls who gave him champagne.
+
+Scores of yarns have been written about the sale of the Bullfrog. It was
+one of the few things in Shorty’s life which he discussed with reserve.
+In my residence two years before he died and in my presence he told my
+wife, to whom he was singularly devoted, the sordid story. “Cross had a
+good head,” Shorty said. “He attended to business, sold his interest and
+retired to a good ranch.
+
+“I woke up one morning and judging from the empties, I must have had a
+grand evening. I reached for a full pint on the table and under it was a
+piece of paper with a note. I read it and learned for the first time
+that I’d sold the Bullfrog.”
+
+“The law would have released you from that contract,” I said.
+
+“I’d signed it,” he answered quietly.
+
+I thought of the crumbling adobe on the Ballarat flat and the lean years
+that followed.
+
+“At that, I got good money for a fellow like me,” he added. “I’ve never
+wanted for anything.”
+
+A fortune blown like a bubble meant absolutely nothing—stopped no laugh;
+dimmed no hope; quenched no fire in his eager eyes.
+
+“If I’d got those millions the big boys would have hauled me off to
+town, put a white shirt on me. Maybe they would have made me believe
+Shorty Harris was important. ‘Mr. Harris this and Mr. Harris that.’ I’ve
+got something they can’t take away. I step out of my cabin every morning
+and look it over—100 miles of outdoors. All mine.”
+
+The future of Rhyolite seemed assured when Bob Montgomery sold to
+Charles M. Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel Company, his interest in
+the claim known as the Montgomery Shoshone for more than $2,000,000.
+
+The discovery of this claim has been accredited to Shoshone Johnnie and
+historians have said that Montgomery bought it from Johnnie for a pair
+of overalls, a buggy, and a few dollars. Actually Bob Montgomery was
+among the first on the scene following Shorty’s discovery strike and
+located the claim himself. Even if Johnnie had located it Montgomery
+would have been entitled to one-half interest for the reason that he had
+been grubstaking Johnnie for years.
+
+It never paid as a mine, but America was gold mad and the two railroads
+which brought mail for Rhyolite also carried stock certificates out and
+the promoters lost nothing.
+
+The strike at Bullfrog was made in 1904. Rhyolite attained a population
+of about 14,000 at its peak—then started downward. On January 1, 1926, I
+made a camp fire in its empty streets and beside it tried to sleep
+through a biting wind that seemed aptly enough a dirge. The next morning
+I poked around in the abandoned stores to marvel at things of value left
+behind. Chinaware and silver in hurriedly abandoned houses and in the
+leading cafe. The cribs still bore the castoff ribbons and silks of the
+girls and for all I know, the satin slipper which I found on a bed may
+have been the one that Shorty Harris filled with champagne to toast the
+charms of Flaming Jane.
+
+I walked up to the vacant depot. Across the door, through which
+thousands had passed from incoming trains with youth and hope and the
+eagerness of life, lay the long-dead carcass of a cow. It fitted, it
+seemed to me, the scene about.
+
+Like Tonopah, Skidoo on top of Tucki Mountain overlooking Death Valley
+may be accredited to the straying of a burro in 1905.
+
+John Ramsey and John Thompson, two prospectors, camped overnight in
+Emigrant Canyon which leads into Death Valley. The grass about was lush
+and they thought it safe to turn the burros loose. The burros strayed
+during the night and because the walls on the east side of the canyon
+are perpendicular, search was immediately confined to the sloping west
+area. But the burros, always unpredictable, found a way to ascend Tucki
+Mountain and there they were found—one of them actually straddling an
+outcropping of gold.
+
+This happened on the 23rd day of the month and because of a popular
+current slang expression, “Twenty-three for you—skidoo,” (meaning
+phooey, or shut up) the claim and the town were named Skidoo.
+
+Bob Montgomery bought the claim on sight. A winding road with a
+spectacular view of Death Valley was built, a mill installed on the side
+of Telephone Canyon and water brought 22 miles from Panamint Canyon. A
+long rambling building on top of the mountain served as offices and
+living quarters for officials. A broad porch encircled it and afforded a
+sweeping and unforgettable view of Death Valley country.
+
+On the area about this building was the company town. Adjoining was “Our
+Town” where the cribs and honkies thrived.
+
+I first visited it with Shorty Harris, holding my breath most of the way
+on the steep, narrow, and winding road. We appropriated the company
+building for our temporary home. Shorty had owned claims there and had
+helped build the road.
+
+Montgomery paid $60,000 for the claims and took out $9,000,000 before
+production costs exceeded his profits, when work was abandoned.
+
+During World War I, Montgomery sold the pipe, which had brought the
+water to Skidoo, to Standard Oil Company at a price far in excess of its
+cost. That was the end of Skidoo.
+
+More interesting to me than the fate of Skidoo was that of Blonde Betty
+and the traveling preacher, of which Shorty was reminded when we
+strolled by the crib in which Betty had lived.
+
+“Skagway Thompson, as fine a chap as ever drew a cork, died right over
+there in that shack and we decided he deserved a nice planting.
+Everybody liked Skagway. Only women around at that time were crib girls
+and they banked his grave with wild flowers and I got this sky pilot to
+say a few words.
+
+“He was a young fellow, good looking and agreeable. I told him Skagway’s
+friends thought it would be nice if one of the women in town would sing
+Skagway’s favorite song. ‘It’s called “When the Wedding Bells Are
+Ringing”’ I said, ‘and I hope you don’t mind if it’s not in the hymn
+books.’ I didn’t tell him the girl who was going to sing it was Blonde
+Betty—a chippy—figuring he’d be on his way before he found out. That gal
+could sing like a flock of larks and after the service the preacher
+barged up to me and said he wanted to meet Betty and would I introduce
+him.
+
+“There was no way out and besides, I figured what he didn’t know
+wouldn’t hurt him. He told her what a wonderful voice she had, how the
+song had touched him and hoped she would sing at one of his meetings.
+
+“Blonde Betty was pretty as curly ribbon and I was afraid every minute
+he was going to ask if he could call on her, so I horned in and said,
+‘Parson, excuse me, but I promised I would bring Miss Betty home right
+away.’
+
+“So I took her arm and pulled her away.
+
+“‘You big-mouthed bum,’ Betty says when we were out of hearing. ‘Why
+don’t you attend to your own business? I know how to act.’”
+
+Shorty pointed to a riot of wild flowers on the side of a hill across
+the gulch. “The next day I saw her and the Parson picking flowers right
+over there. Of course he didn’t know then what she was. After that I
+reckon he didn’t give a dam’. He chucked the preaching job and ran off
+with Betty. But maybe God went along. They got married and live over in
+Nevada and you couldn’t find a happier family or a finer brood of
+children anywhere.
+
+“It is no argument for sin, but this was a hell of a country in those
+days and you just couldn’t always live by the Book.”
+
+On July 4, 1905 Shorty Harris made the strike which started the town of
+Harrisburg, now only a name on a signboard. A feud due to a partnership
+of curious origin, started immediately and is worth mention only because
+it confused historians of a later period who, gathering material after
+Shorty’s death have given only the story of the feudist who survived
+him.
+
+Here is Shorty’s version: “I was trying to save distance by taking the
+Blackwater trail across Death Valley into the Panamint. I had been over
+the country and had seen a formation that looked good and was going back
+to look it over. The Blackwater trail is a wet trail and one of my
+burros sank in the ooze. I had just gotten her out when a fellow I’d
+never seen before, came up. He said he was a stranger in the country and
+he wanted to get to Emigrant Springs where his two partners were
+waiting. He explained that the foreman at Furnace Creek had told him I
+had left only a short while before, but he might overtake me by
+hurrying, and I would show him the way. Then he asked if he could join
+me.
+
+“I told him it was free country and nobody on the square was barred.
+When I reached my destination I showed him the trail to Emigrant
+Springs. I reckon I talked too much on the way over—maybe made him think
+I had a gold mountain. Anyway, he said he believed he would look around
+a little to see what he could find. I didn’t even know his name and
+though it was against the unwritten code, he followed me. There wasn’t
+anything I could do about it without trouble and I was looking for
+gold—not trouble.
+
+“In 15 minutes I had found gold. He was pecking around a short distance
+away and also found rock with color and claimed a half interest. It was
+then that I learned his name—Pete Auguerreberry and that his partners
+were Flynn and Cavanaugh. Wild Bill Corcoran had grubstaked me. I told
+Pete five partners were too many and we should agree upon a division
+point—each taking a full claim and he could have his choice.
+
+“He refused and wanted half interest in both and nothing short of murder
+would have budged him. I went to Rhyolite for Bill Corcoran. He went for
+his partners. When we met, Corcoran had an offer to buy, sight unseen,
+from one of Schwab’s agents. Everyone of us wanted to sell, except Pete
+who stood out for a fantastic price. His partners offered to give him a
+part of their share if he would accept the offer. Pete refused. He
+thought it was worth millions. Wild Bill organized a company and we
+started work.”
+
+For awhile it seemed the Harrisburg claims would prove to be good
+producers. In the end it was just another town on the map for Shorty.
+Futile years for Pete.
+
+
+Once I asked Shorty Harris how he obtained his grubstakes. “Grubstakes,”
+he answered, “like gold, are where you find them. Once I was broke in
+Pioche, Nev., and couldn’t find a grubstake anywhere. Somebody told me
+that a woman on a ranch a few miles out wanted a man for a few days’
+work. I hoofed it out under a broiling sun, but when I got there, the
+lady said she had no job. I reckon she saw my disappointment and when
+her cat came up and began to mew, she told me the cat had an even dozen
+kittens and she would give me a dollar if I would take ’em down the road
+and kill ’em.
+
+“‘It’s a deal,’ I said. She got ’em in a sack and I started back to
+town. I intended to lug ’em a few miles away and turn ’em loose, because
+I haven’t got the heart to kill anything.
+
+“A dozen kittens makes quite a load and I had to sit down pretty often
+to rest. A fellow in a two-horse wagon came along and offered me a ride.
+I picked up the sack and climbed in.
+
+“‘Cats, eh?’ the fellow said. ‘They ought to bring a good price. I was
+in Colorado once. Rats and mice were taking the town. I had a cat. She
+would have a litter every three months. I had no trouble selling them
+cats for ten dollars apiece. Beat a gold mine.’
+
+“There were plenty rats in Pioche and that sack of kittens went like
+hotcakes. One fellow didn’t have any money and offered me a goat. I knew
+a fellow who wanted a goat. He lived on the same lot as I did. Name was
+Pete Swain.
+
+“Pete was all lit up when I offered him the goat for fifty dollars. He
+peeled the money off his roll and took the goat into his shack. A few
+days later Pete came to his door and called me over and shoved a fifty
+dollar note into my hands. ‘I just wanted you to see what that goat’s
+doing,’ he said.
+
+“I looked inside. The goat was pulling the cork out of a bottle of
+liquor with his teeth.
+
+“‘That goat’s drunk as a boiled owl,’ Pete said. ‘If I ever needed any
+proof that there’s something in this idea of the transmigration of
+souls, that goat gives it. He’s Jimmy, my old sidekick, who, I figgered
+was dead and buried.’
+
+“‘Now listen,’ I said. ‘Do you mean to tell me you actually believe that
+goat is your old pal, whom you drank with and played with and saw buried
+with your own eyes, right up there on the hill?’
+
+“‘Exactly,’ Pete shouted, and he peeled off another fifty and gave it to
+me. So, you see, a grubstake, like gold, is where you find it.”
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter X
+                   Greenwater—Last of the Boom Towns
+
+
+Located on Black Mountain in the Funeral Range on the east side of Death
+Valley, Greenwater was the last boom town founded in the mad decade
+which followed Jim Butler’s strike at Tonopah. Records show locations of
+mining claims in the district as early as 1884, but all were abandoned.
+
+The location notice of a “gold and silver claim” was filed in 1884 by
+Doc Trotter, a famous character of the desert, remembered both for his
+good fellowship and his burro—Honest John—a habitual thief of incredible
+cunning, “Picked locks with baling wire....”
+
+The first location of a copper claim was made by Frank McAllister who,
+with a man named Cooper and Arthur Kunzie, may be credited with one of
+the West’s most spectacular mining booms.
+
+In 1905 Phil Creaser and Fred Birney took samples of the Copper Blue
+Ledge and sent them to Patsy Clark, who was so impressed that he
+dispatched Joseph P. Harvey, a prominent mining engineer to look at the
+property. Harvey started from Daggett and had reached Cave Spring in the
+Avawatz Mountains when he was caught in a cloudburst and lost all his
+equipment. He returned to Daggett, secured a new outfit and this time
+reached Black Mountain, but was unable to locate the claims.
+
+Again Birney and Creaser contacted Clark and this time the mining
+magnate came to Rhyolite, ordered another examination of the property,
+giving his agent authority to buy. Upon the assay’s showing, the claims
+were bought. Immediately Charles M. Schwab, August Heinze, Tasker L.
+Oddie, Borax Smith, W. A. Clark, and many other moguls of mining hurried
+to the scene or sent their agents. In their wake came gamblers,
+merchants, crib girls, soldiers of fortune, and thugs.
+
+$4,125,000 was paid for 2500 claims. Result—a hectic town with as many
+as 100 people a day pouring out of the canyons onto the barren, windy
+slope.
+
+Noted mining engineers announced that Black Mountain was one huge
+deposit of copper with a thin overlay of rock, dirt, and gravel. “It
+will make Butte’s ‘Richest Hill on Earth’ look like beggars’ pickings,”
+they announced.
+
+Greenwater stocks sky-rocketed and so many people poured into the new
+camp that the town was moved two miles from the mines in order to take
+care of the growth which it was believed would soon make it a
+metropolis. Before pick and shovel had made more than a dent on the
+crust of Black Mountain, two newspapers, a bank, express lines, and a
+magazine were in operation.
+
+Here Shorty Harris missed another fortune only because his partner went
+on a drunk.
+
+Leaving Rhyolite, Shorty had induced Judge Decker, a convivial resident
+of Ballarat to furnish a grubstake to look over Black Mountain. He made
+several locations, erected his monuments, returned to Ballarat and gave
+them to Decker to be recorded.
+
+When the papers reached Ballarat with the news that the copper barons
+were bidding recklessly for Greenwater claims Shorty was broke again.
+Bursting into Chris Wicht’s saloon, he shouted, “Where’s the Judge?”
+
+Chris nodded toward the end of the bar where the Judge, swaying
+slightly, was waving his glass in lieu of a baton while leading the
+quartet in “Sweet Adeline.” Wedging through the crowd, Shorty touched
+the Judge’s elbow: “Lay off that cooking likker, Judge. It’s Mum’s Extra
+for us from now on.”
+
+“Yeh? How come?” the Judge asked thickly.
+
+“We’re worth a billion dollars,” Shorty said. “I staked out that whole
+dam’ mountain. Where’re those location notices?”
+
+“What location notices?” Decker blinked.
+
+“The ones I gave you to take to Independence.”
+
+With one hand the Judge steadied himself on the bar. With the other he
+fumbled through his pockets, finally producing a frayed batch of papers,
+covered with barroom doodling, but no recorder’s receipt for the
+location notices. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
+
+“So’ll I,” Shorty gulped.
+
+If Decker had recorded the notices both he and Shorty would have become
+rich through the sale of those claims.
+
+When laborers cleared the ground to begin work for Schwab, Patsy Clark,
+and others, they tore down the monuments containing the unrecorded
+notices.
+
+In a little cemetery on the gravel flats at Ballarat, lies Decker.
+
+Pleasantly refreshed with liquor one yawny afternoon he managed to have
+the last word in an argument with the constable, Henry Pietsch and went
+happily to his room. Later the constable thought of a way to win the
+argument and went to the Judge’s cabin. A shot was heard and Pietsch
+came through the door with a smoking gun in his hand. Decker, he said,
+had started for a pistol in his dresser drawer. But Decker was found
+with a hole in his back, his spine severed. At Independence, the
+constable was acquitted for lack of evidence and returned to Ballarat to
+resume his duties, but was told that he might live longer somewhere
+else. Pietsch didn’t argue this time and thus avoided a lynching. He
+left Ballarat and, I believe, was hanged for another murder.
+
+Among those who came early to Greenwater, none was more outstanding than
+a gorgeous creature with a wasp waist who stepped from the stage one
+day, patted her pompadour with jewelled fingers, gave the bustling town
+an approving glance. Then she turned to the bevy of blondes and
+brunettes she had brought. “It’s a man’s town, girls....”
+
+Bystanders were already eyeing the girls; their scarlet lips and the
+deep dark danger in their roving eyes.
+
+So Diamond Tooth Lil was welcomed to Greenwater and became important
+both in its business and social economy.
+
+It was agreed that Lil was a good fellow. Greenwater also learned that
+her word was good as her bond. She kept an orderly five dollar house and
+if anyone chose to break her rules of conduct, he ran afoul of her
+six-gun. Because she could fight like a jungle beast, she was also
+called Tiger Lil. Somewhere along the line, four of her upper teeth had
+been broken and in each of the replacements was set a diamond of first
+quality. As Greenwater prospered so did Diamond Tooth Lil.
+
+One day an exotic creature with a suggestion of Spanish-Creole and dark,
+compelling eyes dropped off the stage. She too had pretty girls and when
+the new bagnio had its grand opening, with champagne and imported
+orchestra, Diamond Tooth Lil sent a huge floral piece.
+
+A few nights later Lil was sitting in her parlor wondering where the men
+were. The girls were all banked around with folded hands.
+
+“Maybe there’s a celebration....” A moment later a belated male barged
+in.
+
+“Willie, where’s everybody?” Lil asked.
+
+Willie flicked a look at the idle girls. “Maybe,” he announced, “they’re
+down at that new cut-rate menage.”
+
+“Cut-rate?” Lil cried.
+
+“Yeh. Three dollars.”
+
+A steely glint came into Diamond Tooth Lil’s eyes.
+
+She tossed her cigarette into the cuspidor, went to her room, picked up
+her six-gun, saw that it was loaded and hurried to her rival’s.
+
+A rap on the door brought the dark beauty to the porch. “Listen dearie,”
+Diamond Tooth Lil began. “This is a union town. I hear you’re scabbing.”
+
+The hot Latin temper flared. “I run my business to suit myself....”
+
+“And you won’t raise the price?” asked Diamond Tooth Lil.
+
+“Never!” Suddenly the exotic one looked into hard steel and harder eyes.
+
+“Okay. You’re through. Start packing,” ordered Lil.
+
+Something in the eyes behind the six-gun told the madam that surrender
+was wiser than a funeral and the scab house closed forever.
+
+A wayfarer in Greenwater announced that he was so low he could mount
+stilts and clear a snake’s belly, but being broke, he could only sniff
+the liquor-scented air coming from Bill Waters’s saloon and look
+wistfully at the bottles on the shelves. Then he noticed that Bill
+Waters was alone, polishing glasses. A sudden inspiration came and he
+sauntered in. “Bill,” he said, “gimme a drink....”
+
+Bill Waters was no meticulous interpreter of English and slid a glass
+down the bar. A bottle followed. The drinker filled the glass, poured it
+down an arid throat. “Thanks,” he called and started out.
+
+“Hey—” cried Bill Waters. “You haven’t paid for that drink.”
+
+“Why, I asked you to give me a drink....”
+
+“Yeh,” Bill sneered. “Well, brother, you’d better pay.”
+
+“Horse feathers—” said the fellow and proceeded toward the door.
+
+Bill Waters picked up a double barrelled shotgun, pointed it at the
+departing guest and pulled the trigger. The jester fell, someone called
+the undertaker and the porter washed the floor.
+
+It looked bad for Bill. But lawyers solve such problems. Bill said he
+was joking and didn’t know the gun was loaded. The answer satisfied the
+court and Bill returned to his glasses.
+
+For a few years Greenwater prospered. Then it was noticed that the
+incoming stages had empty seats. Bartenders had more time to polish
+glasses. “The World’s Biggest Copper Deposit” which the world’s greatest
+experts had assured the moguls lay under the mountain just wasn’t there.
+
+Today there is barely a trace of Greenwater. A few bottles gleam in the
+sun. The wind sweeps over from Dante’s View or up Dead Man’s Canyon. The
+greasewood waves. The rotted leg of a pair of overalls protrudes from
+its covering of sand. A sunbaked shoe lies on its side.
+
+But somewhere under its crust is a case of champagne. Dan Modine, the
+freighter, buried it there one dark night over 40 years ago and was
+never able to find it.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter XI
+                          The Amargosa Country
+
+
+In Hellgate Pass I met Slim again, resting on the roadside, his burro
+browsing nearby. Slim, I may add here, already had a niche in
+Goldfield’s hall of fame. He had walked into a gambling house one day
+broke, thirsty, nursing a hangover, and hoping to find a friend who
+would buy him a drink. Though it was a holiday and the place crowded, he
+saw no familiar face, but while waiting he noticed the cashier was busy
+collecting the winnings from the tables. He also noticed that in order
+to save the time it required to unlock the door of the cage, the cashier
+would dump the gold and silver coins on the shelf at his wicker window,
+then for safety’s sake, shove it off to fall on the floor inside.
+
+Slim watched the procedure awhile and with a sudden bright idea,
+sauntered out. A few moments later he returned through an alley with an
+auger wrapped in a tow sack, crawled under the house and soon a stream
+of gold and silver was cascading into Slim’s hat.
+
+A lookout at a table nearest the cage, hearing a strange metallic noise,
+went outside to investigate and peeking under the floor, saw Slim
+without being seen. It was just too good to keep. Stealthily moving
+away, he spread the news and half of Goldfield was gathered about when
+Slim, his pockets bulging with his loot, crawled out only to face a
+jeering, heckling crowd.
+
+Cornered like a rat in a cage, he couldn’t run; he couldn’t speak. He
+could only stand and grin and somehow the grin caught the crowd and
+instead of a lynching, Slim was handcuffed and led away and later the
+merciful judge who had been in the crowd declared Goldfield out of
+bounds for Slim and sent him on his way.
+
+At no other place in the world except Goldfield, with its craving for
+life’s sunny side, could such an incident have occurred.
+
+After greetings Slim confided that he was en route to a certain canyon,
+the location of which he wouldn’t even tell to his mother. There, not a
+cent less than $100,000,000 awaited him. No prospector worthy of the
+name ever bothers to mention a claim of less value. Not sure of the
+roads ahead, I asked him for directions.
+
+“You’d better go down the valley,” he advised, pointing to a small black
+cloud above Funeral Range. “Regular cloudburst hatchery—these
+mountains.”
+
+At a sudden burst of thunder we flinched and at another the earth seemed
+to tremble. Forked lightning was stabbing the inky blackness and I
+expected to see the mountains fall apart. “Something’s got to give,”
+Slim said. “Look at that lightning ... no letup.” Another roar rumbled
+and rolled over the valley. “God—” muttered Slim, “I haven’t prayed
+since I fell into a mine shaft full of rattlesnakes.”
+
+As we watched the incessant play of lightning, Slim told me about his
+fall into the shaft: “Arkansas Ben Brandt was working about 100 yards
+away. Deaf as a lamp post, Ben is, but I kept praying and hollering and
+just when I’d given up, here comes a rope. You can argue with me all day
+but you can’t make me believe the Lord didn’t unstop old Ben’s ears.”
+
+Slim gave me a final warning. “Take the road over the mountain when you
+come to the Shoshone sign. When you get there be sure to see Charlie
+before you go any farther.”
+
+At every water hole where prospectors were gathered I’d heard someone
+tell someone else to see Charlie. At Furnace Creek I’d heard the vice
+president of the Borax Company tell an official of the Santa Fe railroad
+to see Charlie and only an hour before I met Slim I had stopped to give
+a tire patch to a young miner with a flat. While I waited to see that
+the patch stuck, I learned he was on his way to consult Charlie.
+
+“My helper,” he confided, “jumped my claim after he learned I hadn’t
+done last year’s assessment work. That’s legal if a fellow’s a skunk but
+when he stole my wife and chased me off with my own shotgun,
+bigod—that’s different.” I suggested a lawyer. “I’ll see Charlie
+first....”
+
+Naturally I became curious about this Charlie, who seemed to be a
+combination of Father Confessor and the Caliph Haroun Alraschid to all
+the desert. “Just who is Charlie?” I asked Slim.
+
+“He runs the store at Shoshone. Tell him I’ll be down soon. I want him
+to handle my deal.” He slapped his burro and we parted—he for his
+$100,000,000, I to leave the country. Watching the spring in his step a
+moment, I got into my car and knew at last the why of those dark
+alluring canyons that ran up from the hungry land and hid in the hills.
+I knew why there are riches that nothing can take away and why rainbows
+swing low in the sky. The good God had made them so that fellows like
+Slim could climb one and ride.
+
+Driving along I found myself trying to appraise the endless waste. Was
+it a blunder of creation, hell’s front yard or God’s back stairs? It was
+easy to understand the appeal of vast distances, of desert dawns and
+desert nights but what was it that made men “go desert”?
+
+The answer was becoming clearer. Fellows like Slim had found God in a
+snake hole, or if you prefer—a way of life patterned with infinite
+precision to their needs. It is easy enough to tear into scraps,
+another’s formula for happiness and recommend your own but that is an
+egotism that only the fool will flaunt and I began to suspect that the
+Slims and the Shortys had found a freedom for which millions in the
+tired world Outside vainly struggled and slowly died.
+
+  “I wanted the gold, and I got it—
+    Came out with a fortune last fall—
+  Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
+    And somehow the gold isn’t all.
+
+  It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
+    It twists you from foe to a friend;
+  It seems it’s been since the beginning;
+    It seems it will be to the end.”
+                                                   —_Robert W. Service._
+
+Rounding a sharp turn in the road that led over and around a hill
+jutting out from a mountain of black malpai, I saw a sign: “Shoshone”
+and just beyond, a little settlement almost hidden in a thicket of
+mesquite. A sign on a weather-beaten ramshackle building read, “Store.”
+A few listing shacks on a naked flat. An abandoned tent house, its torn
+canvas top whipping the rafters in the wind. Whirlwinds spiraling along
+dry washes to vanish in hummocks of sand.
+
+The presence of three or four prospectors strung along a slab bench
+either staring at the ground at their feet or the brown bare mountains,
+only emphasized the depressing solitude and I decided if I had to choose
+between hell and Shoshone I’d take hell.
+
+Reaching the store through deep dust, I guessed correctly that the big
+fellow giving me an appraising look was Charlie. He was slow in his
+movements, slow in his speech and I had the feeling that his keen, calm
+eyes had already counted the number of buttons on my shirt and the
+eyelets in my shoes. I asked about the road to Baker.
+
+“Washed out. Won’t be open for two weeks.”
+
+“Two weeks?” I gasped. “Long enough to kill a fellow, isn’t it?”
+
+“Well, there’s a little cemetery handy. Just up the gulch.”
+
+Impulsively I thrust out my hand. “Shake. You win. Now that we
+understand each other, have you a cabin for rent for these two weeks?”
+
+“Yes, but you’d better take it longer,” he chuckled. “In two weeks
+you’ll be a native and won’t want to get out.”
+
+The showing of the cabin was delayed by a lanky individual who was
+pawing over a pile of shoes. “Charlie, soles on my shoes are worn
+through. These any good?”
+
+“Not worth a dam’,” Charlie said. He picked up hammer and nails, handed
+them to the lanky one. “Some old tires outside. Cut off a piece and tack
+it on. I’ll have some good shoes next time you’re in.”
+
+A miner in an ancient pickup stopped for gas. As Brown filled the tank
+he noticed a tire dangerously worn. “Blackie, you need a new casing to
+get across Death Valley.”
+
+“These’ll do,” Blackie answered as he dug into all his pockets, paid for
+the gas and got into the car.
+
+“Wait a minute,” Brown said and in a moment he was rolling a new tire
+out, lifting it to the bed of the pickup. He handed Blackie a new tube.
+“If you use them, pay me. If you don’t, bring ’em back.”
+
+Blackie regarded him a moment. “How’d you know I was broke?” he grinned,
+and chugged away.
+
+A man stopped a truck in front of the door, came in and asked how far it
+was to Furnace Creek. Charlie looked him over, then glanced at the
+truck. “Fifty-eight miles the short way. Nearly 80 the other. You’ll
+have to take the long way.”
+
+“Why?” the fellow bristled.
+
+“Your load is too high for the underpass on the short route. Road’s
+washed out anyway.”
+
+The man frowned and turned to go.
+
+“Wait a minute,” Charlie called. He reached for a sack of flour, laid it
+on a counter. Then he stood a slab of bacon on its edge and cut off a
+chunk. “You’ll stop at Bradbury Well—”
+
+“I won’t stop nowhere,” the truckman said.
+
+“You’ll have to. Your radiator will be boiling.” He got a carton, put
+the flour and bacon in it and reaching on a shelf behind, got coffee,
+sugar, and canned milk and put these in. “Old Dobe Charlie Nels is
+camped there. Poor old fellow hasn’t been in for two weeks....”
+
+The man looked at Charlie, uncertain. “You want me to drop it off, huh?”
+
+“Yes,” Charlie said and lugging the carton to the truck, he shoved it
+in.
+
+With squinted eyes the driver watched. “Mister, I’ll surely fill up here
+on my way back,” and with a friendly wave, climbed into his cab and I
+began to understand why all over the desert I’d heard of Charlie.
+
+The cabin assigned me was the usual box type, shaded by the overhanging
+branches of a screwbean mesquite.
+
+“Cabin’s not much,” Charlie said, “but you’ll have a Beauty Rest
+mattress to sleep on. My wife says folks’ll put up with most anything if
+they have a good bed.” He looked the room over and I noticed that
+nothing escaped him. Wood and kindling. Oil in the lamp. Water in the
+pitcher—an ornate vessel with enormous roses edged with gilt. He opened
+a closet door, saw that the matching vessel was in place and went out.
+After arranging my belongings, with time to kill, I returned to the
+store, hoping to learn something about nearby trails.
+
+A short woman who preceded me slammed a can of coffee on the counter,
+removed her long cigarette holder, blew a ring of smoke at the ceiling
+and asked Charlie where he got the coffee. He told her that it came in a
+shipment.
+
+“Well bigod, you send it back.”
+
+Charlie laughed and turned to me: “This is Myra Benson. You want to stay
+on the good side of Myra. She has charge of the dining room.”
+
+My remark that good coffee was my early morning weakness led to an
+invitation to sample her brew. “Mine too,” she said. “The pot’s on the
+stove before daylight, if you’re up that early.”
+
+I soon discovered that Myra’s language was just a bit of color Death
+Valley imparts to speech, for she was deeply religious if not in all its
+forms, in all of its essentials and the occasional use of a two-fisted
+phrase did not in the least detract from the eternal feminine of one of
+Death Valley’s most remarkable women.
+
+Guided by the light in her kitchen, I joined her the next morning while
+Shoshone still slept, and over a delicious cup learned something about
+people and places.
+
+The man with the wide Stetson was Dan Modine, deputy sheriff. Liked
+poker. The quiet, squat fellow with the blue pop eyes was Billy de Von.
+“College man. Works on the roads. Taught in the University of Mexico
+before he came here. Siberian Red? Oh, that’s Ernie Huhn. No place on
+Godamighty’s earth he hasn’t been. As soon bet $1000 as two bits on a
+pair of jacks.”
+
+“The tall thin fellow they called Sam? Must be Sam Flake. Here before
+Noah built the ark.”
+
+Knowing that Mormons had pioneered in the area, I was curious about an
+undersized man pushing an oversize baby carriage loaded with infants and
+a dozen youngsters trailing him. “Does he happen to be one of the
+Faithful who has clung to his wives?” I asked.
+
+“That’s Eddie Main,” Myra laughed. “Bachelor. Just loves kids. He was
+born in San Francisco in the days when a nickel just wasn’t counted
+unless it had a dime alongside. His folks sent him to New York to be
+educated. Eddie didn’t like it. ‘It’s a nickel town,’ Eddie said.
+‘Cheapest hole on earth.’ He came to the desert and the desert took him
+over. When he’s not hauling kids around he’s reading. Don’t get out on a
+limb in an argument with Eddie. You’ll lose sure. Every now and then
+Eddie goes East for a vacation. It’s awful on the mothers. They have to
+take care of their own children and the children want Eddie.”
+
+“Who is Hank, the fellow that came in with the pickup Ford?” I asked.
+
+“Our bootlegger. Comes Wednesdays and Saturdays. Regular as a bread
+route. Always tell when he’s due. Bench is crowded. Didn’t you notice
+the tarpaulin over his truck? Always two kegs and a sack of empty pints
+and quarts. Rough roads here. Siphons out what you want. Death Valley
+Scotty? Around yesterday. Lit up like a barn afire.” The short man with
+the black whiskers was Henry Ashford who, with his brothers Harold and
+Rudolph owned the Ashford mine.
+
+“How does such a little store in a place like this make a living for the
+Browns?”
+
+“I wonder myself, at times,” she said. “Everybody around here takes
+their troubles to Charlie or Stella. Maybe you noticed their home—the
+cottage with the screen porch a few steps from the store. Stella was
+telling me yesterday she needed a new carpet for her living room. I
+said, ‘I’m not surprised. You’re running a nursery, emergency hospital,
+and a domestic relations court.’ Sometimes young couples find their
+marriage going on the rocks. The woman goes to Stella to get the kinks
+out. As for Charlie, if you’re around long enough you’ll see him most
+every morning strolling over to the shacks in the jungle or up to the
+dugouts in Dublin Gulch. He thinks nobody knows what he’s doing or maybe
+they figure he’s just taking a walk. I know. Some of these old fellows
+are always in a bad way. Just last week Charlie came in here and told me
+to send something a sick man could eat over to old Jim. ‘I’ll have to
+take him to the hospital soon as I can get my car ready,’ he said. Three
+hundred miles—that trip.
+
+“And there’s Phil. You’ll see him around. Fine steady chap. Lost his job
+when the mine he worked in shut down. Long as he was working he was the
+first in the dining room when I opened the door. He began to miss a
+breakfast, then a dinner, and finally he didn’t show up at all. I
+supposed he was cooking his own and didn’t mention it. Kept his chin up.
+You could hear him laughing loud as anybody on the bench, but Charlie
+noticed that once a day Phil would follow his nose over into the
+mesquite where somebody was sure to share a mulligan stew.
+
+“One day when Phil was sitting alone on the woodpile just outside my
+kitchen, Charlie sat down beside him. They didn’t know I was there.
+‘Phil,’ Charlie says, ‘the ditch that carries the runoff up at the
+spring needs widening. Could you spare a few days to put it in shape?’
+
+“Phil left that bench running, got a pick and shovel and went singing up
+the road and to this day he doesn’t know that Charlie just created that
+job so he could eat.”
+
+I mentioned the fellow with black hair and blue eyes. “He complained of
+rheumatism and slapped his knees a lot.”
+
+“Oh, that’s Dutch Barr. It isn’t rheumatism. Just a sign he’s going on a
+drunk.”
+
+The lanky man with the blond eyebrows and sombre face which lighted so
+easily to laugh, was Whitey Bill McGarn. “... Never had a worry in his
+life....”
+
+I learned also that the mountain of malpai which lifts above Shoshone
+was a burial place for a race of Indians antedating the Piutes and
+Shoshones. “They buried their dead in a crouching position on their
+knees, elbows bent, hands at their ears. Old Nancy, who was Sam Yundt’s
+squaw wife before he got rich, says they were buried that way so they
+would be ready to go quick when the Great Spirit called.”
+
+The first rose of dawn was in the sky when I left Myra. “You’ll have
+time enough to look around before breakfast,” she told me and
+recommended a view of the valley from the flat-topped mesa above my
+cabin. “You can reach the top by climbing up a gully and holding on to
+the greasewood. You can see the dugouts in Dublin Gulch too. Some real
+old timers live there.”
+
+A sweeping view of the little valley rewarded the climb.
+
+Below, Shoshone lay, tucked away in the mesquite. No honking horns, no
+clanging cars. No swollen ankles dragging muted chains to bench or
+counter, desk or machine. Soon faint spirals of smoke leaned from the
+shanties. Shoshone was awakening. It would wash its face on a slab
+bench, eat its bacon and eggs, and somebody would go out to look for two
+million dollars.
+
+After breakfast, I joined the old timers on the bench. “No—nothing
+exciting happens around here,” Joe Ryan told me and stopped whittling to
+look at a car coming up the road. A moment later the car stopped at the
+gas pump and three smartly tailored men stepped out. I heard one say,
+“Odd looking lot on that bench, aren’t they?” Then Joe said to the
+fellow at his side, “Queer looking birds, ain’t they?”
+
+“How much is gas?” one of the tourists asked.
+
+“Thirty cents,” Charlie said.
+
+“Why, it’s only 18 in the city,” the man flared. “How far is it to the
+next gas?”
+
+Charlie told him, and Big Dan sitting beside me muttered: “Dam’ fool’ll
+pay 50 cents up there.”
+
+The driver climbed into the car and Charlie asked if he had plenty of
+water.
+
+“A gallon can full....”
+
+“Not enough,” Charlie warned.
+
+A fellow in the back seat spoke, “Aw, go on. He wants to sell a
+canteen....”
+
+As the car pulled out, Joe called to Charlie: “You’re sold out of
+canteens, ain’t you?”
+
+“Yes. But I was going to give him one of those old five gallon cans on
+the dump.” He went inside and Joe Ryan said, “Won’t get far on a gallon
+of water.” He waved his knife toward the little cemetery at the mouth of
+the gulch. “Lot of smart Alecs like him up there, that Charlie dragged
+in offa the desert.”
+
+It was five days almost to the hour when Ann Cowboy, a Piute squaw came
+to the store with an Indian boy who couldn’t speak English; nodded at
+the boy and said to Charlie: “Him see....” She pointed to the big black
+mountain of malpai above Shoshone, whirled her finger in a circle, shot
+it this way and that, then patted the floor. “You savvy?”
+
+Her dark eyes watched Charlie’s and when she had finished Charlie called
+Joe Ryan and together they went across the road, climbed into a pickup
+truck and left in a hurry. Even I understood that somebody on the other
+side of that mountain was in trouble, but I had no idea that in three or
+four hours the pickup would return with a cadaver under a tarpaulin and
+a thirst-crazed survivor whose distorted features bore little
+resemblance to those of man.
+
+Big Dan helped lift the victim from the truck. “There were three,” Dan
+said. “Where is the other fellow?”
+
+“We looked all over,” Joe shrugged.
+
+“The one that’s missing,” Dan said, “is the fellow that griped about the
+canteen. I remember his black hair.”
+
+They carried the still-living man over to Charlie’s house and left him
+to the ministrations of the capable Stella. Charlie returned to the
+store, got a pick and shovel from a rack, handed one to Ben Brandt and
+one to Cranky Casey. Not a word was spoken to them. They took the tools
+and started toward the little cemetery at the mouth of Dublin Gulch.
+
+I joined Dan on the bench. “Well,” Dan said, “they saved the price of a
+canteen.”
+
+
+Two spinsters—teachers of zoology in a fashionable eastern school for
+girls—came in search of a place they called Metbury Springs. Brown told
+them there were no such springs in the Death Valley region. Obviously
+disappointed, one produced a map, spread it on the counter, ran her
+finger over a maze of notes and looking up asked what sort of rats lived
+about Shoshone. Charlie told them that very few rats survived their
+natural enemies and were seldom seen.
+
+“What do they look like?” the teacher asked.
+
+“Just regular rats,” Charlie told her.
+
+Again she consulted her notes. “Do you mean to say the only rat you’ve
+seen here is _Mus decumanus_?”
+
+“Mus who?” Charlie asked. “Only rats around here besides the two-legged
+kind are just plain everyday rats.”
+
+The ladies gathered up their papers, went outside, looked over the
+hills, consulted their maps, and returned to Brown. “Sir, this is
+Metbury Spring,” one announced, “and for your own information we may add
+that in no other place in the world is there a rat like the one you have
+here.”
+
+The amazing feature of this incident is that it is true. The rats in
+some unexplained way had disappeared.
+
+The spinsters remained for weeks but failed to find the specimen they
+sought, but Charlie learned that the first man known to have settled at
+Shoshone was a man named Brown and Shoshone’s first name was Metbury
+Spring.
+
+
+Death came to Shoshone that week-end. George Hoagland, prospector,
+reached Trail’s End. Charlie announced the news to the bench and asked
+for volunteers to dig the grave. Bob Johnson, another prospector, jumped
+up. “I’ll help.”
+
+The others gave Bob a quick look and exchanged slow ones with each
+other, because it was known that Bob had not liked Hoagland. “I’ve been
+in lots of deals with that bastard,” he had often said. “Came out loser
+every time. Always left himself a hole to wiggle out of.”
+
+Right or wrong, Bob’s opinion was shared by many. Herman Jones glanced
+after Bob, now going for a pick and shovel. “That’s sure white of Bob,
+forgetting his grudge,” Herman said and all Shoshone approved.
+
+I joined the little group that filed up to the cemetery at the mouth of
+the gulch for the graveside ceremony. We stood about waiting for the box
+that contained all there was of George.
+
+They take death on the desert just as they do any other grim fact of
+nature. They talked of George and the hard, chalky earth Bob had to dig
+through in the hot sun. There were mild arguments about whose bones lay
+under this or that unmarked grave. “Dad Fairbanks brought that fellow
+in....” “No such thing. That’s Tillie Younger—member of Jesse James’s
+gang. I helped bury him....”
+
+Presently there was a stir and I saw Charlie over where the women were.
+He had another chore and was doing it because there was no one else to
+do it.
+
+“Usually reads a coupla verses,” Joe Ryan told me. “But somebody stole
+the only Bible in Shoshone.”
+
+The box was lowered, the grave filled and Charlie stepped forward. He
+held his hat well up in front of his chest and I suspected that he had a
+few notes pasted in the hat. Those about were listening intently as
+people will to one who has something to say and says it in a few words.
+
+Suddenly I was conscious of mumbling and the tramping of earth and
+seeing Brown flick a glance out of the corner of his eye toward the
+disturbing sound, I turned to see Bob Johnson jumping up and down on the
+earth that filled the grave—careful to miss no inch of it. When he had
+tamped it sufficiently he stepped aside and muttered angrily: “Now dam’
+you—let’s see you wiggle out of this hole!”
+
+Yet, when the hills are covered with wild flowers one may see on the
+unsodded graves of the little cemetery a bottle or a tin can filled with
+sun cups or baby blue eyes and in the dust the tracks of a hobnailed
+shoe.
+
+I soon discovered the bench was more than a slab of wood. It was a state
+of Hallelujah. For the most part those who gathered there were a silent
+lot, but as one unshaven ancient told me, “Too damned much talk in the
+world. Two-three words are plenty—like yes, naw, and dam’.” Some of them
+had beaten trails from Crede or Cripple Creek, Virginia City or Bodie.
+“It’s a clean life and clean money,” was an expression that ran like a
+formula through their conversation.
+
+“Of course, few keep the money they get,” Joe Ryan said. “Jack Morissey
+couldn’t read or write. He struck it rich. Bought a diamond-studded
+watch and couldn’t even tell the time of day. Went to Europe; hit all
+the high spots; came back and died in the poor house. But he had his
+fun, which makes more sense than what Nat Crede did. He hit it rich.
+Built a town and a palace. Then blew his brains out and left all his
+millions to a Los Angeles foundling.”
+
+One oldster remembered Eilly Orrum of Virginia City. “She had followed
+the covered wagons and made a living washing our clothes, but she got
+into our hearts. Everybody liked her. Some say she forgot to get a
+divorce from her second husband before she married Sandy Bowers. Nobody
+blamed her. She and Sandy ran a beanery. Eilly would feed anybody on the
+cuff. John Rodgers ran up a board bill and couldn’t pay it. He had a few
+shares in a no-count claim and talked Eilly into taking the shares to
+settle the bill.
+
+“Within two weeks Eilly was getting $20,000 a month from that deal. It
+wasn’t long before she was giggling happily and telling everybody she
+didn’t see how folks could live on less than $100,000 a year.”
+
+“Julia Bulette? Ran a snooty fancy house. But she taught Virginia City
+how to eat and what, and soon the rich fellows wouldn’t stand for
+anything except the world’s best foods.”
+
+“Oh yes, everybody knew Old Virginny. Gave the town its name. Always
+drunk. Discovered the Ophir. Swapped it for a mustang pony and a pint of
+likker to old Pancake Comstock. When he sobered up he discovered the
+pony was blind. Pancake swapped an eighth interest in the Ophir to a
+Mexican, Gabriel Maldonado, for two burros. The Mexican took out
+$6,000,000. Pancake was quite a lady-killer. Ran away with a miner’s
+wife. Fellow was glad to get rid of her, but decided he’d beat hell out
+of Pancake. Found him in new diggings nearby and jumped him. ‘You don’t
+want her,’ Pancake says. ‘Be reasonable. I’ll buy her.’
+
+“They haggled awhile and the fellow agreed to accept $50 and a plug
+horse. He took the money and started for the horse.
+
+“‘Wait a minute,’ Pancake says, ‘I want a bill of sale,’ and wrote it
+out on the spot, and made the fellow sign it. Didn’t keep her long
+though. She ran away with a tramp fiddler. The Comstock Lode produced
+over a billion dollars. He might have had a fifth of that. Just too
+smart for his own good. Finally paid the price. Found him on the trail
+one day. Brains blowed out. Suicide.”
+
+Dobe Charlie Nels was at Bodie, rendezvous of the toughest of the bad
+men when the United States Hotel rented its rooms in six-hour shifts and
+guests were awakened at the end of that period to make places for
+others. He recalled Eleanor Dumont, whose deft fingers dealt four kings
+to the unwary and four aces to herself. Smitten lovers had shot it out
+for her favors on the Mother Lode and on the Comstock, but when life and
+love still were fair, fate played a scurvy trick on the beauteous
+Eleanor. The shadow of a little down began to show on her lip and
+darkened with the years and so she became Madame Moustache. “She just
+got tired living and one night she went outside, swallowed a little
+pellet and passed the deal to God.”
+
+But the charmers of Bodie and its bad men and the millions its hills
+produced were not so deeply etched on his memory as the job he lost
+because he did it well. Hungry and broke when he arrived he took the
+first job offered—stacking cord wood.
+
+“It was a job I really knew. The boss drove stakes 4×8 feet alongside a
+mountain of cut wood. I figured I had a long job. He left and I took
+pains to make every cord level on top, sides even. When the boss came
+back he blew up, kicked over my piles and wanted to know if I was trying
+to ruin him. ‘If you’d picked out a few crooked sticks and crossed a few
+straight ones, you could have made a cord with half the wood. Get out
+and don’t come back.’” Charlie also had a story of a memorable night.
+
+A bartender in one of Bodie’s better saloons was putting his stock in
+order after a busy night when three celebrants in swallow tails and
+toppers came unsteadily through the doors. The two on the outside were
+gallantly steadying the one in the center as they led him to the bar.
+The bartender smiled understandingly when, coming for their orders, he
+noticed the center man’s head was pillowed on his arms over the bar, his
+topper lying on its side in front of his face. Recalling that the fellow
+had consumed often and eagerly but had paid for none in an earlier
+session, he nodded at the silent one: “Shall I count him out?”
+
+“Oh no. Bill’s buying this time.”
+
+The drinks served, the bartender left to attend another late patron and
+moments passed before he returned to find Bill just as he had left him,
+but alone—his drink untouched. He tapped Bill’s shoulder and asked
+payment for the drinks. When three taps and three demands brought no
+answer, he picked up a bung starter; went around the counter, seized
+Bill by the shoulder, wheeled him around only to discover that Bill was
+dead. Startled and panicky, the bartender now ran to the door, saw
+Bill’s friends weaving up the street and ran after them, told them
+excitedly that Bill had croaked.
+
+“Oh,” one said thickly. “Bill’s ticker jammed in our room an hour ago.
+His last words were, ‘Fellows, I want you to have a drink on me.’
+Couldn’t refuse old Bill’s last request.”
+
+When Dobe Charlie had finished this story he turned to a clear-eyed
+ancient standing nearby. “Jim, I reckon you’d call me a
+Johnny-come-lately since you were a Forty-Niner.”
+
+“No,” Jim said. “I was 12 when I came to Hangtown. I remember a fellow
+they called Wheelbarrow John, because he made a better wheelbarrow than
+anyone else. He saved $3000 and went back East. He was John Studebaker.
+Made wagons first. Then autos.
+
+“Young fellow named Phil Armour came. No luck. Pulled out. He did all
+right in Chicago though. Founded Armour Company.
+
+“Did I ever tell you about the Digger Ounce? No? Well, it’s history. The
+Digger Indians didn’t know what gold was. Actually they’d been throwing
+nuggets at rabbits and couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw miners
+exchange the same stuff for food and clothing at the store. The Indians
+had been getting it along the stream beds for ages. So they came in with
+their buckskin loin bags full of it. The merchant took it all right, but
+when he balanced his scales, he used a weight that gave the Digger only
+one dollar for every five he was entitled to. Then the Indian had to pay
+three prices for everything he bought. One miner loafing around the
+store, followed the Diggers one day, learned where they were getting it
+and cleaned up $40,000 in no time. That’s history too.
+
+“Crooked merchants used the same trick on drunken whites and anybody
+else who didn’t keep their eyes open. So the Digger Ounce became a
+byword all along the Mother Lode.”
+
+But of all the stories about the Comstock this fine old gentleman told
+us, I like best one about Joe Plato. Young, strong, and handsome as
+Apollo, Joe craved a fling after months of toil in the gulches with no
+sight of woman other than the flat-faced Washoe squaws.
+
+In San Francisco Joe saw a big red apple and he wanted it. A
+breath-taking girl sold him the apple and he wanted her. He acquired the
+girl also. His gambols over, Joe handed her five shares of ten he owned
+in a Comstock claim. ‘A little token,’ he grinned, never dreaming the
+beautiful wanton had a heart and loved him madly. So he forgot her. She
+didn’t forget Joe.
+
+Months later the ten shares were worth on the market $1,000,000. Joe
+remembered then. ‘Too much for a girl like that.’
+
+To beat the news and retrieve the stock, he braved Sierra storms, found
+her. In the battle of wits she played her cards superbly. “Of course,”
+she said at last, “... if we were married....”
+
+So the beaten Joe faced the preacher.
+
+When Joe Plato died she took her millions to San Francisco, married a
+rich merchant, became a social leader and the mother of nabobs.
+
+
+One morning at breakfast Myra informed me that I could get to Bradbury
+Well, a famous landmark on the road to Death Valley. To break the
+routine, I went. The route leads over Salsbury Pass, named for Jack
+Salsbury—a congenital promoter who was forever hunting something to
+promote. He had made and lost fortunes in cattle, lumber, and mines and
+for a while lived at Shoshone.
+
+In a ravine near Bradbury Well were two or three dugouts. In one was the
+ubiquitous Rocky Mountain George—lean, seamed, and soft voiced. On the
+box he used for a table lay a letter mailed in Denver and bearing this
+address: “Rocky Mountain George, Nevada.” Known all over the gold belt,
+a dozen postmasters had sent it from town to town and now it had caught
+up with George.
+
+Meeting George a few weeks later in Beatty I recalled our meeting. He
+hadn’t shaved in a week and his torn overalls were covered with grime. A
+well-tailored gentleman came out of the hotel across the street and
+stepped into a smart car. “Hey, Jim—” George called. “Come over here a
+minute....” The man left his car and walked over. “Jim, I want you to
+meet my friend....” Jim and I shook hands. “Jim’s our governor,” George
+added and I looked again at Nevada’s Governor James Scrugham, later its
+U. S. Senator. For an hour he and George talked of canyons in which,
+they decided, somebody would find a billion dollars and I decided
+Democracy was safe on the desert.
+
+Walking up the wash from George’s dugout I was surprised to see a slim
+blonde with blue eyes and a nice smile. Obviously she had just left her
+stove, for she had a steaming pot of coffee in her hand. I made some
+inane remark about the beauty of the morning.
+
+“It’s nearly always like this,” she said and after a moment I was
+sitting on the bench outside the dugout sipping coffee. I learned that
+her name was Helen. “Why shouldn’t I try prospecting? I’ve nothing to
+lose. I had a job clerking, but I just couldn’t scrimp enough to pay for
+medicine and the doctors’ bills.”
+
+That and the telltale spot on her cheek seemed reason enough for her
+presence and, as she explained, “I might make a strike.”
+
+Later in Beatty, I noticed a small crowd about the office of Judge W. B.
+Gray, Beatty’s marrying Justice, who was also interested in mines.
+“What’s the riot?” I asked Rocky Mountain George, who was whittling on
+the bench beside me. “Helen made a big strike,” he told me and I hurried
+over and met her coming out—radiant and excited.
+
+“I’ve just heard of your strike,” I said. “Where did you make it?”
+
+“Right in that wash,” she laughed. “He came along one day and—well, we
+just got to liking each other and—” She paused to introduce me to a good
+looking clean-cut fellow and added: “So we just up and married.”
+
+The population of Beatty had so changed in one generation that in 1949
+when the town wanted to put on a celebration, not a citizen could be
+found who knew Beatty’s first name. Finally a former acquaintance was
+located at Long Beach who advised a booster group that the name of its
+founder was William Martin Beatty. The gentleman is mistaken. Beatty’s
+first name was Montelius and was called Monte by all old timers.
+
+A feature of social life in Shoshone was the Snake House—an unbelievable
+structure made of shook from apple crates, scraps of corrugated iron
+found in the dump, tin cut from oil cans, and cardboard from packing
+cartons, which because of scant rainfall, served almost as well as wood
+or iron.
+
+A fellow comes in from the hills, craves relaxation and finds it in the
+Snake House. Though he never plays poker, Eddie Main who lived a few
+yards away was induced to function as a sort of Managing Director, to
+see that the game remained a gentleman’s game.
+
+Inside, swinging from the roof is a Coleman lantern and under it a big
+round table covered with a blanket stretched tight and tacked under the
+edges. A rack of chips. Chairs for players and kegs and beer crates for
+spectators. A stove in the corner furnishes heat when needed. If you
+limit your poker to penny ante, the game is not for you. I have seen
+more than $1000 in the pots and large bets are the rule.
+
+One night Sam Flake who has been in Death Valley country longer than any
+living man, joined the game. Sam, a student of poker, ran afoul of four
+queens and went home broke. The next day as he worked in a mine tunnel,
+Sam was holding a post mortem over his disaster. He went over his play
+point by point. Like many a desert man used to solitude, Sam
+occasionally talked to himself aloud, And unaware that Whitey Bill
+McGarn was in a stope just above him, Sam diagnosed his loss: “I opened
+right. I anted right. I bet right. I called right. Can’t be but one
+answer. I was sitting in the wrong seat.” (Sam Flake died suddenly at
+Tecopa Hot Springs in 1949.)
+
+The village of Tecopa is 11 miles south of Shoshone. When the railroad
+was built stations were given names of local significance and this
+honors the Indian chief, Cap Tecopa.
+
+Important discoveries of gold, silver, lead, and talc were made and are
+still being worked. In the early days murders of both whites and
+Indians, without any clues were of frequent occurrence. Someone recalled
+that every killing of an Indian by a white man had been followed by a
+white man’s murder.
+
+The Piute believed in blood atonement and when a young American was
+found butchered in the Ibex hills, friends of the deceased went to Cap
+Tecopa with evidence which indicated the murder was committed by Cap’s
+tribesmen. “We want these killings stopped,” they told him heatedly.
+
+Cap denied any knowledge of the crime and brushed aside the suggestion
+that he produce the assassin. “Too many Indians,” Cap said. “But if you
+help, I can stop the killings.”
+
+“How?” they demanded.
+
+“You tell hiko no kill Indian. I tell Indian no kill hiko.”
+
+Cap Tecopa was a good prospector and owned a coveted claim which he
+refused to sell.
+
+Among the fortune seekers was a flashily dressed individual who wore a
+tall silk topper. The beegum fascinated Cap and he wanted it. He
+followed the wearer about, his eyes never leaving the shiny headgear. At
+last the urge to possess was irresistible and he approached the owner. A
+lean finger gingerly touched the sacred brim. “How much?”
+
+All he got was a shake of the head. Failure only stimulated Tecopa’s
+desire. His money refused, Cap in his desperation thought of the claim
+which the cunning of the promoters, the wiles of gamblers, the pleas of
+friends had failed to get.
+
+The owner of the hat annoyed by Tecopa, decided to get rid of him. “You
+take hat. I take claim.”
+
+The Indian reached for the topper. “Take um,” he grunted and the deal
+was made. Several other versions of this story are recalled by old
+timers.
+
+The Tecopa Hot Springs were highly esteemed by the desert Indian, who
+always advertised the waters he believed to have medicinal value. In the
+Coso Range he used the walls of a canyon approaching the springs for his
+message. The crude drawing of a man was pictured, shoulders bent,
+leaning heavily on a stick. Another showed the same man leaving the
+springs but now walking erect, his stick abandoned.
+
+The Tecopa Springs are about one and a half miles north of Tecopa and
+furnish an astounding example of rumor’s far-reaching power. Originally
+there was only one spring and when I first saw it, it was a round pool
+about eight feet in diameter, three feet deep and so hidden by tules
+that one might pass within a few feet of it unaware of its existence.
+The singularly clear water seeped from a barren hill. About, is a
+blinding white crust of boron and alkali. There Ann Cowboy used to lead
+Mary Shoofly, to stay the blindness that threatened Mary Shoofly’s
+failing eyes. When the whites discovered the spring, the Indians
+abandoned it.
+
+Later it became a community bath tub and laundry. Prospectors would
+“hoof” it for miles to do their washing because the water was hot—112
+degrees, and the borax content assured easy cleansing. Husbands and
+wives began to go for baths and someone hauled in a few pieces of
+corrugated iron and made blinds behind which they bathed in the nude. A
+garment was hung on the blind as a sign of occupation and it is a
+tribute to the chivalry of desert men that they always stopped a few
+hundred feet away to look for that garment, and advanced only when it
+was removed.
+
+Today you will see two new structures at the spring and long lines of
+bathers living in trailers parked nearby. They are victims of arthritis,
+rheumatism, swollen feet, or something that had baffled physicians,
+patent medicines, and quacks. They come from every part of the country.
+Somebody has told them that somebody else had been cured at a little
+spring on the desert between Shoshone and Tecopa.
+
+Some live under blankets, cook in a tin can over bits of wood hoarded
+like gold, for the vicinity is bare of growth. It is government land and
+space is free. Some camp on the bare ground without tent, the soft silt
+their only bed. “Something ails my blood. Shoulder gets to aching. Neck
+stiff. Come here and boil out” ... “Like magic—this water. I’ve been to
+every medicinal bath in Europe and America. This beats ’em all.”
+
+You finally turn away, dazed with stories of elephantine legs, restored
+to perfect size and symmetry. Of muscles dead for a decade, moving with
+the precision of a motor. Of joints rigid as a steel rail suddenly
+pliable as the ankles of a tap dancer.
+
+Here they sit in the sun—patient, hopeful; their crutches leaning
+against their trailer steps. They have the blessed privilege of
+discussing their ailments with each other. “Oh, your misery was nothing.
+Doctors said I would never reach here alive....”
+
+An analysis shows traces of radium.
+
+A few miles below Tecopa is another landmark of the country known as the
+China Ranch. To old timers it was known as The Chinaman’s Ranch. One
+Quon Sing, who had been a cook at Old Harmony Borax Works quit that job
+to serve a Mr. Osborn, wealthy mining man with interests near Tecopa.
+His service with Osborn covered a period of many years.
+
+“I can’t state it as a fact,” Shorty Harris once told me, “but I have
+been told by old settlers that Osborn located him on the ranch as a
+reward for long and faithful service.”
+
+The land was in the raw stage, with nothing to appeal to a white man
+except water. It was reached through a twisting canyon which filled at
+times with the raging torrents dropped by cloudbursts. Erosion has left
+spectacular scenery. In places mud walls lift straight up hundreds of
+feet. Nobody but a Chinaman or a bandit hiding from the law would have
+wanted it.
+
+There was a spring which the Chinaman developed and soon a little stream
+flowed all year. The industrious Chinaman converted it into a profitable
+ranch. He planted figs and dates and knowing, as only a Chinaman does,
+the value and uses of water the place was soon transformed into a garden
+with shade trees spreading over a green meadow—a cooling, restful little
+haven hidden away in the heart of the hills. He had cows and raised
+chickens and hogs. He planted grapes, dates, and vegetables and soon was
+selling his produce to the settlers scattered about the desert. From a
+wayfaring guest he would accept no money for food or lodging.
+
+After the Chinaman had brought the ranch to a high state of production a
+white man came along and since there was no law in the country, he made
+one of his own—his model the ancient one that “He shall take who has the
+might and he shall keep who can.” He chased the Chinaman off with a shot
+gun and sat down to enjoy himself, secure in the knowledge that nobody
+cared enough for a Chinaman to do anything about it.
+
+The Chinaman was never again heard of.
+
+The ranch since has had many owners. Though the roads are rough and the
+grades difficult, on the broad verandas that encircle the old ranch
+house, one feels he has found a bit of paradise “away from it all.”
+
+Sitting on the porch once with Big Bill Greer, who owned a life interest
+in it until his demise recently, we talked of the various yarns told of
+the Chinaman.
+
+“The best thing he did was that planting over there by the stream.” He
+lifted his huge form from the chair. “Just wait a minute. I’ll get you a
+specimen.”
+
+While he was gone I strolled around to see other miracles wrought by the
+heathen chased from his home by a Christian’s gun. When I returned Bill
+was waiting with two tall glasses, diffusing a tantalizing aroma of
+bourbon. Floating on the liquor were bunches of crisp, cooling mint. He
+gave me one, lifted the other. “Here’s to Quon Sing. God rest his soul,”
+Bill said.
+
+As we slowly sipped I asked him if he had brought the specimen.
+
+“It’s the mint,” Bill said.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XII
+                   A Hovel That Ought To Be a Shrine
+
+
+An Indian rode up to the bench, leaped from his cayuse and tried to tell
+Joe Ryan something about a “hiko.” Joe matched his pantomime and broken
+English, finally jerking a thumb over his shoulder and the Indian went
+into the store.
+
+“That’s Indian Johnnie,” Joe said: “Hundred and fifty miles to his
+place, other side of the Panamint. Awful country to get at. Shorty
+Harris is in a bad way at Ballarat.”
+
+A few moments later Charlie drove his pickup to the pump, filled the gas
+tank and before we realized it, was swallowed in a cloud of dust. “He’s
+in for a helluva trip,” Joe said.
+
+Before the day was over, snow covered the high peaks and a biting wind
+drove us from the bench. “Let’s go over to the Mesquite Club,” Joe said.
+
+We hurried across the road to the sprawling old building hidden in a
+thicket and listing in every direction of the compass, but over the
+roof, like friendly arms crooked the branches of big mesquite trees.
+Among mining men that ramshackle was known around the world.
+
+Inside was a big pot-bellied stove. Beside it, a huge woodbox. Chairs
+held together with baling wire. Two or three old auto seats hauled in
+from cars abandoned on the desert. An ancient, moth-eaten sofa on which
+the wayfarer out of luck was privileged to sleep. Three or four tables,
+each with a dog-eared deck of cards where old timers played solitaire or
+a spot of poker. There were books and magazines—high and low-brow, left
+by the tourists. But there was a friendliness about the shabby room that
+had nothing to gain from mahogany or chandeliers of gold.
+
+Wind kept us indoors for two days. On the third we were on the bench
+again when someone said, “Here comes Charlie....”
+
+A moment later Joe and Big Dan were helping Charlie take Shorty Harris,
+dean of Death Valley prospectors, more dead than alive, into a cabin and
+lay him on the bed. “You must have had an awful time,” Joe said to
+Charlie.
+
+“Not too bad ... made it,” Charlie answered as he started a fire in the
+stove. He brought in water and wood and turned to Joe. “Wish you’d fill
+up that gas tank and see about the oil....”
+
+Joe looked at him, puzzled.
+
+“Got to take him to the hospital,” Charlie said.
+
+We knew that meant another trip of 140 miles.
+
+“Damned if you do,” Joe said. “I’ll get somebody to go.”
+
+I supposed after the all night trip under such conditions Brown would go
+to bed but an hour later when I went to the store for some small
+purchase a woman climbed out of a pickup truck and with three small
+children, came in. She lived on her ranch 60 miles away and had come to
+buy her month’s supply of provisions—a full load for the truck. When she
+paid her bill she nodded toward her brood: “Charlie, those kids look
+like brush Indians with all that hair....”
+
+Charlie got scissors and comb and went to work. Before he had swept out
+the shorn locks Ben Brandt came in, holding his jaw.
+
+“Feels like a stamp mill,” he groaned. “Haven’t slept in a week. Be dead
+by the time I get to Barstow.” It was 125 miles to Barstow and Ben was
+waiting for a ride with someone going that way.
+
+Charlie went behind the counter, returned with forceps, opening and
+closing the jaws of the instrument two or three times as if in practice
+and then he turned to the sufferer: “You understand it’s against the law
+for me to use these things. In a pinch—”
+
+“To hell with the law,” Ben snapped. “Yank it out!”
+
+Charlie took a chair to the back porch. Ben sat down and with a
+vice-like arm about Ben’s head, the forceps went in and the tooth came
+out.
+
+I went outside and sat on the bench with a better understanding of
+Shoshone and people and values which come only from friendships closely
+knitted and help unselfishly given.
+
+Why does a man like the desert? As good an answer as any is another
+question: Why does he like chicken? Students of human behavior, poets,
+writers, gushing debutantes and greying dowagers, humorless scientists,
+and bored urbanites have labored mightily to explain it.
+
+“Something just gets into the blood,” one says, frankly groping for an
+answer. Immensities of space. Solitudes that whittle the ego down to
+size. Detachment from routine cares. A feel of nearness to whatever it
+is that is God. Stars to finger. The muted symphonies of farflung sky
+and earth.
+
+Whatever it is, I was now aware that as between hell and Shoshone, I
+would give the nod to Shoshone. I was getting used to Shoshone and
+desolation when a few days later Charlie came out of the store and sat
+beside me on the bench. “Road’s open,” he said. “I reckon you’re in a
+hurry to get away.”
+
+I didn’t answer at once but conscious of his searching look, finally
+stammered that Dan Modine wanted me to go with him to Happy Jack’s
+party. “I can spare another day....” Charlie lit a cigarette, took a
+puff or two. “You’ve gone desert,” he chuckled and went back into the
+store.
+
+For a week I’d been hearing of Happy Jack’s party and when Dan told me
+that everyone within 100 miles would be on hand, I was glad to go. Dan
+gave me Jack’s background on the 35 mile trip across dry washes, deep
+sands, and hairpin turns on pitching hills.
+
+Born on the desert, Jack was the son of a Forty Niner and a Piute squaw.
+He had grown up as an Indian and had married Mary, a full blood Piute.
+Jack’s brother Lem married Anna, another squaw.
+
+“Lem had worked at odd jobs and in the mines,” Dan said. “Now and then
+he and Anna would do a little prospecting. Anna found a claim that
+showed a little color. Lem worked alongside his squaw a couple weeks,
+but it was a back breaking job and Lem quit it. But Anna kept digging
+and one day she came up to their shack with a piece of ore that was
+almost pure gold. Anna’s find made them rich.
+
+“I reckon money does things to people. Anyway, it didn’t take Lem long
+to get rid of Anna. He gave her enough so that she could take it easy.
+Then he pushed off to the city to live high, wide, and handsome. I see
+Anna now and then. She’s not jolly like she used to be. Lem has always
+wanted Jack to get rid of Mary and come to the city. In fact, Jack told
+me once that Lem offered to give him half of his money if he would do
+that. But Jack said, to hell with the city. He’s the happy go lucky
+sort. Big, good looking, and lazy. His old dobe under the cottonwood
+tree and the water running by with plenty of outdoors—that suits Jack.”
+
+We found, as Dan had predicted, that everybody in the country had come
+to Jack’s party. A long U shaped table was placed outside under the
+shade of a tree. From nearby pits came a tantalizing aroma of barbecue.
+A keg of bourbon encircled with glasses stood beside a bucket of
+dripping mint. Cigars and cigarettes were on top of the keg and Jack saw
+that his guests were always supplied.
+
+There was an orchestra with capable musicians, Jack occasionally pinch
+hitting for the bull fiddler when the latter took time out for a drink
+or a dance. But when the snare drum player wanted his bourbon, Jack was
+like a kid pulling doodads from a Christmas tree. “It will last a week,”
+Dan said. “A few may pull out after a day or two, but others will take
+their places.”
+
+“This must have cost Jack a year’s labor,” I said. “I told him that
+once,” Dan laughed. “He asked me what else would a fellow work a year
+for.”
+
+Jack’s views of life and things were Mary’s, except that Mary knew lean
+years come and if any provisions were to be made for them she would have
+to make them. She tended the goats and the sheep, cut the deer and the
+mountain sheep into strips and hung them high, where the flies wouldn’t
+get them, to cure in the breeze. If Jack wanted to throw a party, so did
+Mary. “... Big party ... kill fat steer. Five sheep. Heap good time....”
+To Jack’s everlasting credit, be it said that whatever Mary did, suited
+Jack.
+
+“Oh, him fine man,” Mary would say. “Like home. Play with children. No
+get mad....”
+
+There may be somewhere in this world a morsel approaching Mary’s
+barbecued mountain sheep, but I’ve never tasted it.
+
+Jack told me later that the best meat is that from an old ram with no
+teeth. “He hasn’t eaten all winter, because his teeth won’t let him cut
+the hard, woody sage and being starved when spring comes, he gorges on
+the new sacatone. He fattens quickly and his flesh is tender.”
+
+While Dan and I were walking about, a long limousine came across the
+valley and parked behind a screen of mesquite well away from the house
+and the guests. Dan and I happened to be nearby as a big, dark man
+expensively tailored stepped out. A lady fashionably dressed remained in
+the car.
+
+“That’s Lem,” Dan explained. “When he was a kid he ran around in a gee
+string. I reckon his wife doesn’t want to meet the in-laws.”
+
+We came upon him a moment later and while he and Dan talked of old times
+Jack rushed down and embraced Lem. “Come up,” he urged, but Lem’s
+interest was lukewarm. Mary was busy and he would see her later. No, he
+didn’t wish a drink. He had cigars. Just stopped in to see how Jack was
+and if he’d changed his mind.
+
+Dan and I moved away and sat under a shed along the runoff of the spring
+and had no choice about listening to a conversation not intended for our
+ears.
+
+Jack was squatted on his heels and his brother was sitting on a boulder.
+Lem was talking, his voice brittle: “Of course, we married squaws ...
+but we are more white than Indian. I’ll give you all the money you need.
+Let Mary go back to her people. She’ll be happy. Look at Anna ... she’s
+contented and better off with her own people and it will be the same
+with Mary.”
+
+Lem lifted his hand, a big diamond ring flashing on his finger as he
+pointed to the squalid cabin where Jack’s fat squaw, her face beaming,
+was serving the guests. “Look at that hovel. Just a pig sty. If you
+prefer that to $10,000 a year, it’s your business. I’ve come out for the
+last time....”
+
+Jack, bareheaded, rose, his hair rumpled in the wind as he glanced at
+the things about—the sagging roof, the shade tree beside it and
+following his glance I saw Mary smile at him and wave. Then he turned to
+Lem: “A pig sty, huh? Ten thousand a year. Mansion in the city.” His
+eyes traveled over Lem’s smart tailored suit, the diamond, the malacca
+cane pecking the gravel at his feet. I could see Jack’s fingers digging
+at his palms, the muscles rippling along his wrists and I sensed that he
+was seething inside.
+
+“Pig sty.... One year I recollect, no crop. No meat. No game. Nothing. I
+was down with fever. She was down too, but she got up and walked and
+crawled from here to Indian Springs. Through the brush. Over the
+mountain to get grub from her people. Why, sometimes I’d feel like going
+off by myself and bawling....” Jack turned again to his brother, flint
+in his dark eyes. “I ought to brain you. To hell with your money. She
+stuck with me and bigod, I’ll stick with her.”
+
+Then Jack calmly strode back to his party, and somehow it seemed to me
+the hovel had suddenly become a holy shrine.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XIII
+                      Sex in Death Valley Country
+
+
+Sex, of course, went with the white man to the desert, but because there
+were no Freuds, no Kinseys stirring the social sewage, it was considered
+merely as a biologic urge and thus its impact on the lives of the early
+settlers was a realistic one. It was not good for man to live alone. The
+husky young adventurer found a water hole and a cottonwood tree and
+built a cabin. But he found it wasn’t a home. The lonely immensity of
+space he knew, was no place for a white woman and none were there. He
+faced the fundamental problem squarely and looked about for a squaw.
+
+He paid Hungry Bill or some other Indian head man $10 for the mate of
+his choice and that sanctified the relation. She brought a certain
+degree of orderliness to the cabin, washed his clothes, cooked his
+meals. A child was born and the cabin became a home. The squaw could
+sharpen a stick, walk out into the brush and return with herbs and roots
+and serve a palatable dinner. She worked his fields, groomed his horses
+and relieved him of responsibility for the children. The progeny
+followed the rules of breeding. Some good. Some bad.
+
+Said old Jim Baker, who married a Shoshone, pleading for a “squar” deal
+for his son: “There’s only one creature worse than a genuine Indian and
+that’s a half breed. He has got two devils in him and is meaner than the
+meanest Indian I ever saw. That boy of mine is a half-breed and he ain’t
+accountable.”
+
+Almost all of the first settlers were squaw men and the matings were
+tolerated because they were understood. It was often a long journey to
+obtain the sanction of a Chief and the squaw was taken without
+formality. Many of these matings lasted and the offspring were absorbed
+without social embarrassment in the life of the community. Dr. Kinsey
+would have had little joy in his search for perversion or infidelities,
+though there is the instance of a drunken squaw who aroused the owner of
+a saloon at midnight on the Ash Meadows desert and shouted: “I want a
+man....”
+
+Once Shoshone faced the desperate need of a school. There were only
+three children of school age in the little settlement and the nearest
+school was 28 miles away. Parents complained, but authorities at the
+county seat nearly 200 miles away, pointed out that the law required 13
+children or an average attendance of five and a half to form a school
+district.
+
+Like other community problems it was taken to Charlie, though none
+believed that even Charlie could solve it.
+
+The time for the opening of schools was but a few weeks away when one
+day Brown headed his car out into the desert. “Hunting trip,” he
+explained.
+
+In a hovel he found Rosie, a Piute squaw with a brood of children. “How
+old?” Charlie asked.
+
+“Him five ... him six now,” she said. “Him seven. Him eight.”
+
+“How’d you like to live at Shoshone? Plenty work. Good house.”
+
+“Okay. Me come,” Rosie said.
+
+With the half breeds, the school was able to open.
+
+Rosie was a challenging problem. She would have taken no beauty prize
+among the Piutes, but when along her desert trails she acquired these
+children of assorted parentage, Fate dealt her an ace.
+
+With the few dollars Rosie wangled from the several fathers for the
+support of their children, she lived unworried. She liked to get drunk
+and the only nettling problem in her life was the federal law against
+selling liquor to Indians. So she established her own medium of
+exchange—a bottle of liquor. Unfortunately she spread a social disease
+and that was something to worry about.
+
+“Rosie has Shoshone over a barrel,” Joe Ryan said. “If we run her out,
+we won’t have enough children for school.”
+
+Then there was the economic angle—the loss of wages by afflicted miners
+and mines crippled by the absence of the unafflicted who would take time
+off to go to Las Vegas for the commodity supplied by Rosie.
+
+Charlie arranged for Ann Cowboy to look after Rosie’s children and
+called up W. H. Brown, deputy sheriff at Death Valley Junction and told
+him to come for Rosie. Brownie, as he is known all over the desert, came
+and took Rosie into custody. “What’ll I charge her with?”
+
+“She has a venereal disease,” Charlie said.
+
+“There’s no law I know of against that....”
+
+“All right. Charge her with pollution. She got drunk and fell into the
+spring.” Then Charlie called up the Judge and suggested Rosie have a
+year’s vacation in the county jail.
+
+The paths that radiated from Rosie’s shack in the brush like spokes from
+the hub of a wheel, were soon overgrown with salt grass. She served her
+sentence and returned to Shoshone and the paths were soon beaten smooth
+again.
+
+Eventually Brown declared Shoshone out of bounds for Rosie and she moved
+over into Nevada. There she found a lover of her tribe and one night
+when both were drunk, Rosie decided she’d had enough of him and with a
+big, sharp knife she calmly disemboweled him—for which unladylike
+incident she was removed to a Nevada prison where the state cured her
+syphilis and turned her loose—if not morally reformed, at least
+physically fit.
+
+One of Rosie’s patrons was a man thought to be in his middle fifties.
+Always carefully groomed, his white shirts, spotless ties, and tailored
+suits were conspicuous in a place where levis were the rule. He was also
+a total abstainer. When he died suddenly and it was learned he was 82
+years old, Shoshone gasped. An item in his will read: “To Rosie, $50 to
+buy whiskey.”
+
+Living in a wickiup in the mesquite was the Indian, Tom Weed, who shared
+with his squaw a passion for liquor. Sober, Tom was industrious in the
+Indian way. He knew the country, when and where the mountain sheep were
+fattest; the herbs that cured and the best grasses for the beautiful
+baskets woven by his wife.
+
+Tom filed on a deposit of non-metallic ore near Shoshone and forgot it.
+A subsequent locater found a buyer. Considerable capital was to be
+invested and the purchaser decided that Tom, if so disposed, could at
+least challenge the title. In order to dispose of Tom he sent the
+document to Dad Fairbanks together with a check payable to Tom for $1000
+and asked Dad to get a quit claim deed from Tom.
+
+Since $1000 was more than Tom ever expected to see in his life he was
+eager to sign. “You cash check?” he asked Dad.
+
+“Sure,” Dad told him.
+
+As Dad was getting the money he said, “Tom, long winter ahead. Hard to
+get work. Don’t you think you’d better leave money with me? Might come
+in handy.” Dad saw that Tom was impressed and added: “You told me
+yesterday you were going over to Las Vegas. That’s another good reason.
+Think it over.”
+
+“Okay. Me think.” Tom stood for a long moment staring at the floor,
+studying every angle of the problem. Finally he thrust his palm at Dad
+and said gravely: “Might die....”
+
+Dad gave him the money and Tom went to Las Vegas. In an hour he was
+drunk. In three he was broke and in jail.
+
+One night he and his squaw got blissfully drunk. They were sleeping in a
+shed full of combustible junk when it caught fire. Other Indians
+attracted by their screams rushed to the scene but both were dead. From
+Tom’s wickiup, a few feet from the shed, they took Tom’s guns and
+saddles, his squaw’s priceless baskets—all the belongings of both—and
+tossed them into the flames. Thus the evil spirits were kept away and
+the souls of Tom and his squaw passed happily to the Piute heaven which
+is a place where there is a big lake and forests filled with game and
+the squaws are strong and plentiful.
+
+
+The Johnnie Mine, an important gold producer, east of Shoshone, was
+located by John Tecopa, son of Cap Tecopa, Pahrump Chief.
+
+Tecopa found the float; gave Ed Metcalf an interest to help him locate
+the ledge. Bob and Monte Montgomery bought the claim. They interested
+Jerry Langford, who induced the Mormon Church to get behind the project.
+
+The Potosi was an early discovery on Timber Mountain between the Johnnie
+Mine and Good Springs. (It was here that Carole Lombard, wife of Clark
+Gable, was killed in an airplane accident in 1941.) From this mine came
+the lead which made the bullets used in the Mountain Meadows massacre.
+Jeff Grundy, a prospector of early days, said his father molded the
+bullets and delivered them to John D. Lee, who after 20 years was
+executed for the murder of the 123 victims of the massacre.
+
+Lee was the owner of Lee’s Ferry, which was the only place where the
+Colorado River could be crossed in the Grand Canyon area until the
+present suspension bridge 500 feet high was built.
+
+Near Johnnie are Ash Meadows and the beautiful Pahrump Valley,
+overlooked by the Charleston Mountains—the summer sleeping porch of Las
+Vegas, 35 miles south.
+
+At Ash Meadows lived Jack Longstreet, who wore his hair long enough to
+cover his ears. He claimed kinship with the distinguished South Carolina
+family of that name. Easier to prove is that Mr. Longstreet came from
+Texas and as a 14 year old youngster was caught with a band of horse
+thieves in Colorado. The older ones were hanged but because of his youth
+Longstreet was released after his ears were cropped to brand him for
+identification by others. He lived and drank lustily for 96 years and
+died with a competency.
+
+Near Johnnie also lived Mary Scott, who discovered the Confidence Mine,
+a landmark in Death Valley. Mary was a squaw who, after consorting with
+several white men, chose for her mate a half-breed named Bob Scott. On a
+hunting and trapping trip Mary picked up some ore which Scott decided
+was silver. Since silver could not be profitably handled because of
+transportation costs, Scott filed no notice.
+
+Years after Scott’s death, Mary showed samples of the ore to her cousin,
+an Indian named Bob Black and Bob showed it to Frank Cole, a millwright
+at the Johnnie Mine. Cole and Jimmy Ashdown grubstaked Mary and Bob, who
+returned to Death Valley and located the property. Samples showed rich
+gold.
+
+For a wagon with a canopy and a spavined horse Cole and Ashdown secured
+the interest of Mary and Bob. Cole and Ashdown then sold to the
+Montgomery brothers, who through Bishop Cannon secured backing for the
+venture from the Mormon Church.
+
+Dan Driscoll built the road to the mine. Shorty Harris, Bob Warnack, and
+Rube Graham dug the well and mine shaft. It produced rich ore to a depth
+of 65 feet, where the vein was broken up.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XIV
+                   Shoshone Country. Resting Springs
+
+
+The country about Shoshone is identified with the earliest migration of
+Americans to California.
+
+It is a curious fact that prior to the coming of Jedediah Smith who, in
+1826 was actually the first American to enter the state from the east,
+the contented Spanish believed that the Sierras were insurmountable
+barriers to invasion by the hated American or any attacking enemy.
+
+After Smith the first white American to look upon the Shoshone region so
+far as known, was William Wolfskill, a Kentucky trapper who left Santa
+Fe in 1830-31 on a trading expedition with stores of cloth, garments,
+and gimcracks.
+
+Having had poor luck in disposing of his cargo, when he reached the
+Virgin River he decided to push westward across the Mojave Desert and
+entered California by way of Cajon Pass. After resting at San Gabriel he
+went north into the San Joaquin Valley. There he disposed of his stock
+at fabulous prices, taking in trade mules, horses, silks, and other
+items which he took to Taos and Santa Fe, receiving for this merchandise
+equally huge profits.
+
+Wolfskill later settled in Los Angeles, one of the earliest Americans in
+the pueblo where he acquired large land holdings. There he established
+the citrus industry, planting a grove in what is now the heart of Los
+Angeles.
+
+In 1832 Joseph B. Chiles organized a party at Independence, Missouri,
+and started for California. It numbered 50 men, women, and children.
+Upon reaching Fort Laramie, Wyoming (which was officially Fort John, but
+for some reason was never so called) Chiles met Joseph Reddeford Walker
+and employed him as guide.
+
+Eighteen years before the Bennett-Arcane party came to grief, Walker had
+discovered Walker River and Walker Lake in Nevada, afterward named for
+him. After reaching the Sierras, his jaded teams were unable to cross
+and had to be abandoned, the party narrowly escaping death. Having heard
+of the southerly course over the old Spanish Trail, he turned back and
+over it guided the Chiles party.
+
+Early in 1843, John C. Fremont led a party of 39 men from Salt Lake City
+northward to Fort Vancouver and in November of that year, started on the
+return trip to the East. This trip was interrupted when he found his
+party threatened by cold and starvation and he faced about; crossed the
+Sierra Nevadas and went to Sutter’s Fort. After resting and outfitting,
+he set out for the East by the southerly route over the old Spanish
+trail, which leads through the Shoshone region.
+
+At a spring somewhere north of the Mojave River he made camp. The water
+nauseated some of his men and he moved to another. Identification of
+these springs has been a matter of dispute and though historians have
+honestly tried to identify them, the fact remains that none can say “I
+was there.”
+
+In the vicinity were several springs any of which may have been the one
+referred to by Fremont in his account of the journey. Among these were
+two water holes indicated on early maps as Agua de Tio Mesa, and another
+as Agua de Tomaso.
+
+There are several springs of nauseating water in the area and some of
+the old timers academically inclined, insisted that Fremont probably
+camped at Saratoga Springs, which afforded a sight of Telescope Peak or
+at Salt Spring, nine miles east on the present Baker-Shoshone Highway at
+Rocky Point.
+
+Kit Carson was Fremont’s guide. Fremont records that two Mexicans rode
+into his camp on April 27, 1844, and asked him to recover some horses
+which they declared had been stolen from them by Indians at the
+Archilette Spring, 13 miles east of Shoshone.
+
+One of the Mexicans was Andreas Fuentes, the other a boy of 11
+years—Pablo Hernandez. While the Indians were making the raid, the boy
+and Fuentes had managed to get away with 30 of the horses and these they
+had left for safety at a water hole known to them as Agua de Tomaso.
+They reported that they had left Pablo’s father and mother and a man
+named Santiago Giacome and his wife at Archilette Spring.
+
+With Fremont, besides Kit Carson, was another famed scout, Alexander
+Godey, a St. Louis Frenchman—a gay, good looking dare devil who later
+married Maria Antonia Coronel, daughter of a rich Spanish don and became
+prominent in California.
+
+In answer to the Mexicans’ plea for help, Fremont turned to his men and
+asked if any of them wished to aid the victims of the Piute raid. He
+told them he would furnish horses for such a purpose if anyone cared to
+volunteer. Of the incident Kit Carson, who learned to write after he was
+grown, says in his dictated autobiography: “Godey and myself volunteered
+with the expectation that some men of our party would join us. They did
+not. We two and the Mexicans ... commenced the pursuit.”
+
+Fuentes’ horse gave out and he returned to Fremont’s camp that night,
+but Godey, Carson, and the boy went on. They had good moonlight at first
+but upon entering a deep and narrow canyon, utter blackness came, even
+shutting out starlight, and Carson says they had to “feel for the
+trail.”
+
+One may with reason surmise that Godey and Carson proceeded through the
+gorge that leads to the China Ranch and now known as Rainbow Canyon.
+When they could go no farther they slept an hour, resumed the hunt and
+shortly after sunrise, saw the Indians feasting on the carcass of one of
+the stolen horses. They had slain five others and these were being
+boiled. Carson’s and Godey’s horses were too tired to go farther and
+were hitched out of sight among the rocks. The hunters took the trail
+afoot and made their way into the herd of stolen horses.
+
+Says Carson: “A young one got frightened. That frightened the rest. The
+Indians noticed the commotion ... sprang to their arms. We now
+considered it time to charge on the Indians. They were about 30 in
+number. We charged. I fired, killing one. Godey fired, missed but
+reloaded and fired, killing another. There were only three shots fired
+and two were killed. The remainder ran. I ... ascended a hill to keep
+guard while Godey scalped the dead Indians. He scalped the one he shot
+and was proceeding toward the one I shot. He was not yet dead and was
+behind some rocks. As Godey approached he raised, let fly an arrow. It
+passed through Godey’s shirt collar. He again fell and Godey finished
+him.”
+
+Subsequently it was discovered that Godey hadn’t missed, but that both
+men had fired at the same Indian as proven by two bullets found in one
+of the dead Indians. Godey called these Indians “Diggars.” The one with
+the two bullets was the one who sent the arrow through Godey’s collar
+and when Godey was scalping him, “he sprang to his feet, the blood
+streaming from his skinned head and uttered a hideous yowl.” Godey
+promptly put him out of his pain.
+
+They returned to camp. Writes Fremont: “A war whoop was heard such as
+Indians make when returning from a victorious enterprise and soon Carson
+and Godey appeared, driving before them a band of horses recognized by
+Fuentes to be part of those they had lost. Two bloody scalps dangling
+from the end of Godey’s gun....”
+
+Fremont wrote of it later: “The place, object and numbers considered,
+this expedition of Carson and Godey may be considered among the boldest
+and most disinterested which the annals of Western adventure so full of
+daring deeds can present.” It was indeed a gallant response to the plea
+of unfortunates whom they’d never seen before and would never see again.
+
+When Fremont and his party reached the camp of the Mexicans they found
+the horribly butchered bodies of Hernandez, Pablo’s father, and Giacome.
+The naked bodies of the wives were found somewhat removed and shackled
+to stakes.
+
+Fremont changed the name of the spring from Archilette to Agua de
+Hernandez and as such it was known for several years. He took the
+Mexican boy, Pablo Hernandez, with him to Missouri where he was placed
+with the family of Fremont’s father-in-law, U. S. Senator Thomas H.
+Benton. The young Mexican didn’t care for civilization and the American
+way of life and in the spring of 1847 begged to be returned to Mexico.
+Senator Benton secured transportation for him on the schooner Flirt, by
+order of the Navy, and he was landed at Vera Cruz—a record of which is
+preserved in the archives of the 30th Congress, 1848.
+
+Three years later a rumor was circulated that the famed bandit, Joaquin
+Murietta was no other than Pablo Hernandez.
+
+Lieutenant, afterwards Colonel, Brewerton was at Resting Springs in 1848
+with Kit Carson who then was carrying important messages for the
+government to New Mexico. He found the ground white with the bleached
+bones of other victims of the desert Indians. Brewerton calls them Pau
+Eutaws.
+
+The Mormons began early to look upon this region as a logical part of
+the State of Deseret, for the creation of which, Brigham Young
+petitioned Congress, setting forth among reasons for the recognition of
+such a state that: “... We are so far removed from all civilized society
+and organized government and also natural barriers of trackless deserts,
+including mountains of snow and savages more bloody than either, so that
+we can never be united with any other portion of the country.”
+
+As early as 1851, the far-seeing Young decided to found a colony of
+Saints in San Bernardino, California, to extend Mormon influence. Sam
+Brannan, brilliant adherent of that faith, had already come to
+California with the nucleus of a Mormon colony in 1846, two years before
+Marshall discovered gold.
+
+Brannan became an outstanding figure among the Argonauts. None exceeded
+him in leadership or popularity in the building of San Francisco and the
+state. He grew rich and unfortunately began drinking; finally abandoned
+Mormonism and died poor.
+
+The colonizers sent out by Brigham Young were in three divisions. One
+under the leadership of Amasa Lyman, who brought his five wives. Another
+was headed by Charles C. Rich, who was accompanied by three of his
+wives. It is interesting to note that Rich became the father of 51
+children by five wives.
+
+The third division was under the command of Captain Jefferson Hunt,
+guide for the entire party. These leaders were all able men who were
+highly regarded by gentiles. They also camped at Agua de Hernandez and
+it was the Mormons who junked the previous name and gave one with
+significance. They called it “Resting Springs” and this more fitting
+name has lasted.
+
+On May 21, 1851, the Mormon elder, Parley P. Pratt, heading a party of
+missionaries en route to the South Sea Islands writes in his diary: “We
+encamped at a place called Resting Springs.... This is a fine place for
+rest.... Since leaving the Vegas (Las Vegas) we have traveled 75 miles
+through the most horrible desert.... Twenty miles from the Vegas we were
+assailed ... by a shower of arrows from the savage mountain robbers....
+Leaving Resting Springs the party arrived at Salt Spring gold mines
+toward evening....”
+
+In 1850, Phineas Banning, pioneer resident of Los Angeles and later
+owner of Catalina Island, hauled freight from Los Angeles to the gold
+mine at Salt Spring opposite Rocky Point just south of the Amargosa
+River on the Baker road and in 1854 Mormons discovered gold 25 miles
+south of Resting Springs, long before Dr. French searched for the
+Gunsight in Death Valley.
+
+The Amargosa River is one of the world’s most remarkable water courses.
+Originating at Springdale, north of Beatty, Nevada, it twists southward
+in zigzag pattern until it reaches a point about 34 miles south of
+Shoshone. There it turns west, crosses Highway 127, enters Death Valley
+at its most southerly point and then turns north to disappear 60 miles
+from the place of its origin.
+
+You may cross and re-cross it many times totally unaware of its
+existence, but in the cloudburst season it can and does become a
+terrible agent of destruction.
+
+In 1853 Major George Chorpenning obtained a contract to carry mail
+between the Mormon colony of San Bernardino, California, and Salt Lake.
+To reach Resting Springs, a station on the route, required five days.
+Today it is a journey of four hours.
+
+Resting Springs was also a relay station for white outlaws and Indian
+raiders from Utah, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Even before Fremont,
+Carson, or the Mormons old Bill Williams, for whom Bill Williams River,
+Bill Williams Mountain, and the town of Williams, Arizona, are named was
+at Resting Springs.
+
+    [Illustration: Map of Death Valley]
+
+    [Illustration: John W. Searles, looking for gold, made a fortune in
+    borax.]
+
+    [Illustration:  COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Like Weepah which “Boomed
+    and Busted” after one day, Gilbert died after a few weeks.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD G. WEIGHT Saratoga Springs]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. The Bottom
+    of America]
+
+                               BAD WATER
+                       279.6 FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL
+                 LOWEST POINT IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
+
+                       ⇐  SHOSHONE           57
+                       ⇐  BAKER              93
+                          FURNACE CREEK      17  ⇒
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Grave of
+    Jas. Dayton.
+    Bones are those of his horses.]
+
+    [Illustration: Dugouts in Dublin Gulch at Shoshone.]
+
+    [Illustration: Mesquite Club, Shoshone. Known throughout the West.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Golden
+    Canyon]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. One of the
+    famous Twenty Mule Teams.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Here boomed
+    and busted the C. C. Julian swindle. Great names and great banks
+    were shamefully involved.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Yellow Aster Mine
+    (foreground) made owners rich. Randsburg in the background.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Belle Springs (Agua Tomaso)
+    on old Salt Lake trail. Camp site of John C. Fremont.]
+
+    [Illustration: Ralph Jacobus Fairbanks, outstanding pioneer, every
+    man’s friend.]
+
+    [Illustration: Dobe Charlie Nels.
+    He saw Bodie boom and die.]
+
+    [Illustration: Bodie, hellroarer from cemetery. Now another ghost
+    town.]
+
+    [Illustration: Seldom-seen Slim, colorful desert character.]
+
+    [Illustration: Senator Charles Brown, benevolent overlord of Death
+    Valley.]
+
+    [Illustration: Panamint Tom, noted Piute, brother of Hungry Bill,
+    Indian Chief]
+
+    [Illustration: Where these wickiups were, now stands luxurious
+    Furnace Creek Inn.]
+
+    [Illustration: Courtesy Frasher’s Photo.  Pomona, Calif. Darwin
+    Falls]
+
+    [Illustration: First House in Shoshone, built by Cub Lee.]
+
+    [Illustration: Shorty Harris and his cabin at Ballarat, Panamint
+    Valley.]
+
+    [Illustration: Jim Butler, the discoverer of Tonopah Silver.]
+
+    [Illustration: Sir Harry Oakes, booted off a train one day,
+    discovered one of the world’s richest mines the next.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Beatty, Nevada. Bare
+    Mountain in distance.]
+
+    [Illustration: “Ma” and “Dad” Fairbanks.
+    He was known to the Indians as Long Man.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Old Road Sign in Emigrant
+    Wash.]
+
+                            Townsend Pass →
+                             ← Skidoo 7 M.
+
+    [Illustration: Rock resting on gravel, gravel on sand. Here Quon
+    Sing, heathen, created an oasis, was chased off by Christian’s
+    guns.]
+
+    [Illustration: Death Valley Scotty on his native heath.]
+
+    [Illustration: Charles and Stella Brown, Shoshone.]
+
+    [Illustration: Station at Rhyolite, Nevada, long a ghost town.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Monument in
+    Death Valley honors Shorty Harris.]
+
+  BURY ME BESIDE JIM DAYTON IN THE VALLEY WE LOVED. ABOVE ME WRITE:
+  “HERE LIES SHORTY HARRIS, A SINGLE BLANKET JACKASS
+  PROSPECTOR.”—EPITAPH REQUESTED BY SHORTY (FRANK) HARRIS BELOVED GOLD
+  HUNTER. 1856-1834. HERE JAS. DAYTON, PIONEER, PERISHED 1898.
+
+  TO THESE TRAILMAKERS WHOSE COURAGE MATCHES THE FOUNDERS OF THE LAND
+  THIS BIT OF EARTH IS DEDICATED FOREVER.
+
+    [Illustration: Pete Harmon, prospector. He walked more than 400
+    miles in July to visit Shorty Harris when he heard that he was ill.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD. O. WEIGHT Calico, Ghost Town]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Wild Burro
+    Colt]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Death Valley’s fantastic
+    rock formations seen from Auguerreberry’s Point.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Old Harmony Borax Works,
+    opposite Furnace Creek.]
+
+    [Illustration: January 2, 1926. We camped our second night out at
+    the Phantom City of Rhyolite.]
+
+    [Illustration: Dublin Gulch, Shoshone. In these dugouts lived Joe
+    Volmer, Dobe Charley and Jack Crowley, prospectors.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Golden Street, Rhyolite]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Bad Water, here the thirsty
+    drank and died.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Ballarat, once an important
+    freight station, now sand and sage.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Stables of Tufa Works used
+    by Twenty Mule Teams, where borax was mined.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Zabriskie Ruins. Opals may
+    be found in the canyon at right.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Charcoal
+    Pits]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Typical
+    Death Valley Canyon]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Death Valley
+    sand dunes]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Effect of
+    prehistoric convulsions]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Furnace
+    Creek wash]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER’S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Ryan, and an
+    abandoned borax mine.]
+
+Williams was a Baptist preacher, turned Mountain Man. He had guided
+Fremont through the terrors of the San Juan country and was accused of
+cannibalism when hunger threatened one detachment. Of Williams Kit
+Carson said: “In starving times, don’t walk ahead of Bill Williams.”
+
+Williams brought a band of Chaguanosos Indians to Resting Springs and
+made it an outpost for a horse stealing raid. With him were Pegleg Smith
+and Jim Beckwith, the mulatto who after having been a blacksmith with
+Ashley’s Fur Traders in 1821, became a famous guide, Indian Chief,
+trader, and scout. (Also called Beckwourth and Beckworth.)
+
+Leaving Resting Springs, they proceeded through Cajon Pass for their
+loot and on May 14, 1840, Juan Perez, administrator at San Gabriel
+Mission excited Southern California when he announced that every ranch
+between San Gabriel and San Bernardino had been stripped of horses. Two
+days later posses from every settlement in the valley started in
+pursuit. The raiders made it a running battle, defeated several
+detachments, adding the latter’s stock and grub to their plunder.
+
+Five days later, reinforcements were sent from Los Angeles, Chino, and
+other settlements, all under command of Jose Antonio Carrillo—ancestor
+of the movie celebrity, Leo Carrillo. He had “225 horses, 75 men, 49
+guns with braces of pistols, 19 spears, 22 swords and sabers, and 400
+cartridges.”
+
+The posse threw fear into the raiders, but didn’t catch them, though the
+latter lost half of the stolen horses. At Resting Springs, Carrillo
+found some abandoned clothing, saddles, and cooking utensils. Fifteen
+hundred horses that had died from thirst or lack of food were counted
+during the chase.
+
+Later, when Pegleg Smith was chided about the high price he demanded of
+an emigrant for a horse, he remarked: “Well, the horses cost me plenty.
+I lost half of them getting out of the country and three of my best
+squaws....”
+
+The earliest American settler at Resting Springs remembered by old
+timers was Philander Lee, a rough and somewhat eccentric squaw man. He
+was big, straight as a ramrod, afraid of nothing, and of an undetermined
+past. He was there in the early Eighties. He cleared 200 acres, raised
+alfalfa, stock, and some fruit. He had a way of adding the last part of
+his first name to his offspring, Leander and Meander are samples. Some
+of his descendants still live in the country.
+
+It was near Resting Springs Ranch while Phi Lee owned it that Jacob
+Breyfogle, of lost mine fame, was scalped by Hungry Bill’s tribesmen.
+The story is told in another chapter.
+
+Phi Lee’s brother, Cub Lee, who added spicy pages to the annals of Death
+Valley country, built the first home erected at Shoshone—an adobe which
+still stands. It was long the home of the squaw, Ann Cowboy. Another
+brother of Phi Lee was known as “Shoemaker” because he roamed the desert
+as a cobbler. All were squaw men.
+
+Cub Lee established a reputation for keeping his word and it was said no
+one ever disputed it and lived. Indians over in Nevada were giving a
+“heap big” party. His squaw wanted to go. Cub didn’t. “You stay home,”
+he ordered. “If you go, I’ll kill you.” He rode away and upon returning,
+discovered she was absent. He leaped on his cayuse, went to the party
+and found her. Whipping out his gun he killed both wife and son, blew
+the smoke out of his pistol and leisurely rode away.
+
+But the Nevada officials thought Cub Lee was too meticulous about
+keeping his word and Cub had a brief cooling off period in the pen.
+
+Pegleg Smith made Resting Springs his headquarters for the greatest haul
+in the history of California horse stealing and reached Cajon Pass
+before the theft was discovered. These horses were driven into Utah and
+there sold to emigrants, traders, and ranchers. Smith may be said to be
+the inventor of the Lost Mine, as a means of getting quick money. The
+credulous are still looking for mines that existed only in Pegleg’s fine
+imagination.
+
+Thomas L. Smith was born at Crab Orchard, Kentucky, October 10, 1801.
+With little schooling, he ran away from home to become a trapper and
+hunter, and following the western streams eventually settled in Wyoming.
+He married several squaws, choosing these from different tribes, thus
+insuring friendly alliance with all.
+
+He had been a member of Le Grand’s first trapping expedition to Santa Fe
+and was an associate of such outstanding men as St. Vrain, Sublette,
+Platte, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, the merchant Antoine Rubideaux
+(properly Robedoux) of St. Louis. He spoke several Indian languages and
+earned the gratitude of the Indians in his area by leading them to
+victory in a battle with the Utes. Able and likable, he also had iron
+nerves and courage. His morals, he justified on the ground that his were
+the morals of the day.
+
+J. G. Bruff, historian, whose “Gold Rush-Journal and Drawings” is good
+material for research, met Smith on Bear River August 6, 1849, and wrote
+in his diary: “Pegleg Smith came into camp. He trades whiskey.” Actually
+he traded anything he could lay his hands on.
+
+While trapping for beaver with St. Vrain on the Platte, Smith was shot
+by an Indian, the bullet shattering the bones in his leg just above the
+ankle. He was talking with St. Vrain at the moment and after a look at
+the injury, begged those about to amputate his leg. Having no experience
+his companions refused. He then asked the camp cook to bring him a
+butcher knife and amputated it himself with minor assistance by the
+noted Milton Sublette.
+
+Smith was then carried on a stretcher to his winter quarters on the
+Green River. While the wound was healing he discovered some bones
+protruding. Sublette pulled them out with a pair of bullet molds. Indian
+remedies procured by his squaws healed the stump and in the following
+spring of 1828 he made a rough wooden leg. Thereafter he was called
+Pegleg by the whites and We-he-to-ca by all Indians.
+
+A wooden socket was fitted into the stirrup of his saddle and with this
+he could ride as skillfully as before. In the lean, last years of his
+life, he could be seen hopping along under an old beaver hat in San
+Francisco to and from Biggs and Kibbe’s corner to Martin Horton’s.
+Something in his appearance stamped him as a remarkable man.
+
+Major Horace Bell, noted western ranger, lawyer, author, and editor of
+early Los Angeles, relates that he saw Pegleg near a Mother Lode town,
+lying drunk on the roadside, straddled by his half-breed son who was
+pounding him in an effort to arouse him from his stupor.
+
+Smith had little success as a prospector, but saw in man’s lust for
+gold, ways to get it easier than the pick and shovel method.
+
+In the pueblo days of Los Angeles, Smith was a frequent visitor at the
+Bella Union, the leading hotel. Always surrounded by a spellbound group,
+he lived largely. When his money ran out he always had a piece of
+high-grade gold quartz to lure investment in his phantom mine.
+
+And so we have the Lost Pegleg, located anywhere from Shoshone to
+Tucson. Nevertheless, no adequate story of the movement of civilization
+westward can ignore South Pass and Pegleg Smith.
+
+
+About 25 miles east of Shoshone and set back from the road under willows
+and cottonwoods, an old house identifies a landmark of Pahrump
+Valley—the Manse Ranch, once owned by the Yundt family.
+
+The original Yundt was among the first settlers, contemporary with
+Philander and Cub Lee and Aaron Winters. Yundt was a squaw man and his
+children, Sam, Lee, and John followed the father in taking squaws for
+their wives.
+
+Sam Yundt was operating a small store at Good Springs and making a
+precarious living when a sleek and talented promoter secured a mining
+claim nearby and induced Sam to enlarge his stock in order to care for
+the increased business promised by supplying provisions for the mine’s
+employees. Sam, with visions of quick, profitable turnovers, stocked the
+empty shelves. For a few months the bills were paid promptly, then
+lagged. Sam yielded to plausible excuses and carried the account.
+Finally his own credit was jeopardized and wholesalers began to threaten
+suits. Then he heard the sheriff had an attachment ready to serve. In
+his desperation Sam went to the debtor. “I’m ruined,” he pleaded. “You
+fellows will have to raise some money or we’ll all quit eating.”
+
+The fellow said, “All I can give you is stock in the Yellow Pine. It’s
+that or nothing.”
+
+Sam Yundt had done with next to nothing all his life, took the stock and
+waited for the sheriff. Then the miracle—pay dirt and Sam Yundt was
+rich, and now he did the natural thing. He decided he would live at a
+pace that matched his means.
+
+George Rose, an old friend, had a mine in the Avawatz and he needed
+money. He went to Sam. “Now that you’re rich,” he told Sam, “you’ll be
+taking life easy. I’ve got some swamp land on the coast near Long Beach.
+Best duck shooting I know of and I’ll sell it cheap.”
+
+Sam didn’t want it but he bought it just to accommodate his friend. In a
+little while the swamp land was an oil field and oil added another
+fortune to Yellow Pine’s gold. Sam put his squaw Nancy, away, moved to
+the city and married a white woman. Nancy was provided for and for years
+she could be seen driving all over the desert in her buggy.
+
+A later owner of the Manse was one of whom the writer has a revealing
+memory. A battered Ford stopped at Shoshone and an unshaven individual
+stepped out, went into the store and came out with a loaf of bread and a
+chunk of bologna. Dirty underwear showed through a flapping rent in his
+patched overalls as he tore off a piece of bread and a chunk of the
+bologna and had his meal. The uneaten portions he tossed into the tool
+box, wiped his hands on his thighs and his mouth on his hand.
+
+“Jean Cazaurang,” Brown chuckled, “won’t pay six bits for lunch in the
+dining room. Worth $2,000,000.”
+
+When the dinner gong sounded Cazaurang went to his tool box, retrieved
+the rest of the bologna, twisted a hunk from the bread loaf, tossed the
+rest back into the tool box. This time he saved a dollar. He curled
+himself up in the Ford that night and saved $2.00. Besides the Manse
+Ranch he had a 10,000 acre ranch in Mexico, stocked with sheep, cattle,
+and horses, and had several mines.
+
+Jean’s end was not a happy one. One payday at his ranch, the good
+looking and likable young Mexican who worked for him, came for his
+money. Jean counted out the money from a poke and poured it into the
+palm of the Mexican. The Mexican counted it and with a smile looked at
+Jean. “Pardon me, Señor ... it’s two bits short.”
+
+“Be gone,” ordered Jean.
+
+“But Señor, I have worked hard. My wife is hungry and I am hungry. My
+children are hungry.”
+
+“Be gone,” again shouted Jean and whipped out his gun.
+
+But the Mexican was young, lean, and lithe and he seized Jean’s wrist
+and when he turned the wrist loose Jean Cazaurang was dead. And then the
+Mexican made one mistake. Instead of going to the sheriff he became
+panic stricken and taking the body to a nearby ravine, he heaved it into
+the brush where it was found later, feet up.
+
+But Jean Cazaurang had saved two bits.
+
+A big luxuriously appointed hearse came for Jean and people said it was
+the first decent ride he’d ever had in his life.
+
+Sentiment was with the Mexican, but he drew a short term for bungling.
+
+Because in one will Jean left his property to his wife and in another to
+his housekeeper, the estate was tied up in court, where it remained for
+11 years—fat pickings for lawyers. Finally the widow was awarded one
+half the estate under community property law, but the widow was dead.
+The housekeeper got the other half, and so ends the story of Jean
+Cazaurang and two bits.
+
+Rarely did desert ranches show other profits than those which one finds
+in doing the thing one likes to do, as in the case of a recent owner of
+the Manse—the wealthy Mrs. Lois Kellogg—the soft-voiced eastern lady who
+fell in love with the desert, drilled an artesian well, the flow of
+which is among the world’s largest. Small, cultured, she yet found
+thrills in driving a 20-ton truck and trailer from the Manse to Los
+Angeles or to the famed Oasis Ranch 200 miles away in Fish Lake
+Valley—another desert landmark which she bought to further gratify her
+passion for the Big Wide Open.
+
+And there you have a slice of life as it is on the desert—one miserably
+dying in his lust for money, one fleeing its solitude; another seeking
+its solace.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter XV
+                       The Story of Charles Brown
+
+
+The story of Charles Brown and the Shoshone store begins at Greenwater.
+In the transient horde that poured into that town, he was the only one
+who hadn’t come for quick, easy money. On his own since he was 11 years
+old, when he’d gone to work in a Georgia mine, he wanted only a job and
+got it. In the excited, loose-talking mob he was conspicuous because he
+was silent, calm, unhurried.
+
+There were no law enforcement officers in Greenwater. The jail was 130
+miles away and every day was field day for the toughs. Better citizens
+decided finally to do something about it. They petitioned George Naylor,
+Inyo county’s sheriff at Independence to appoint or send a deputy to
+keep some semblance of order.
+
+Naylor sent a badge over and with it a note: “Pin it on some husky
+youngster, unmarried and unafraid and tell him to shoot first.”
+
+Again the Citizens’ Committee met. “I know a fellow who answers that
+description,” one of them said. “Steady sort. Built like a panther. Came
+from Georgia. Kinda slow-motioned until he’s ready for the spring.
+Name’s Brown.”
+
+The badge was pinned on Brown.
+
+Greenwater was a port of call for Death Valley Slim, a character of
+western deserts, who normally was a happy-go-lucky likable fellow. But
+periodically Slim would fill himself with desert likker, his belt with
+six-guns, and terrorize the town.
+
+Shortly after Brown assumed the duties of his office, Slim sent word to
+the deputy sheriff at Death Valley Junction that he was on his way to
+that place for a little frolic. “Tell him,” he coached his messenger,
+“sheriffs rile me and he’d better take a vacation.”
+
+After notifying the merchants and the residents, who promptly barricaded
+themselves indoors, the officer found shelter for himself in Beatty,
+Nevada.
+
+So Slim saw only empty streets and barred shutters upon arrival and
+since there was nothing to shoot at he headed through Dead Man’s Canyon
+for Greenwater. There he found the main street crowded to his liking and
+the saloons jammed. He made for the nearest, ordered a drink and
+whipping out his gun began to pop the bottles on the shelves. At the
+first blast, patrons made a break for the exits. At the second, the
+doors and windows were smashed and when Slim holstered his gun, the
+place was a wreck.
+
+Messengers were sent for Brown, who was at his cabin a mile away. Brown
+stuck a pistol into his pocket and went down. He found Slim in Wandell’s
+saloon, the town’s smartest. There Slim had refused to let the patrons
+leave and with the bartenders cowed, the patrons cornered, Slim was
+amusing himself by shooting alternately at chandeliers, the feet of
+customers and the plump breasts of the nude lady featured in the
+painting behind the bar. Following Brown at a safe distance, was half
+the population, keyed for the massacre.
+
+Brown walked in. “Hello, Slim,” he said quietly. “Fellows tell me you’re
+hogging all the fun. Better let me have that gun, hadn’t you?”
+
+“Like hell,” Slim sneered. “I’ll let you have it right through the
+guts—”
+
+As he raised his gun for the kill, the panther sprang and the battle was
+on. They fought all over the barroom—standing up; lying down; rolling
+over—first one then the other on top. Tables toppled, chairs crashed.
+For half an hour they battled savagely, finally rolling against the
+bar—both mauled and bloody. There with his strong vice-like legs wrapped
+around Slim’s and an arm of steel gripping neck and shoulder, Brown
+slipped irons over the bad man’s wrists. “Get up,” Brown ordered as he
+stood aside, breathing hard.
+
+Slim rose, leaned against the bar. There was fight in him still and
+seeing a bottle in front of him, he seized it with manacled hands,
+started to lift it.
+
+“Slim,” Brown said calmly, “if you lift that bottle you’ll never lift
+another.”
+
+The bad boy instinctively knew the look that pages death and Slim’s
+fingers fell from the bottle.
+
+Greenwater had no jail and Brown took him to his own cabin. Leaving the
+manacles on the prisoner he took his shoes, locked them in a closet. No
+man drunk or sober he reflected, would tackle barefoot the gravelled
+street littered with thousands of broken liquor bottles. Then he went to
+bed.
+
+Waking later, he discovered that Slim had vanished and with him, Brown’s
+number 12 shoes. He tried Slim’s shoe but couldn’t get his foot into it.
+There was nothing to do but follow barefoot. He left a blood-stained
+trail, but at 2 a.m. he found Slim in a blacksmith shop having the
+handcuffs removed. Brown retrieved his shoes and on the return trip Slim
+went barefoot. After hog-tying his prisoner Brown chained him to the bed
+and went to sleep.
+
+Thereafter, the bad boys scratched Greenwater off their calling list.
+
+Slim afterwards attained fame with Villa in Mexico, became a good
+citizen and later went East, established a sanatorium catering to the
+wealthy and acquired a fortune.
+
+Among the first arrivals in Greenwater was a lanky adventurer known to
+the Indians as Long Man and to whites for his ability to make money in
+any venture and an even more marvelous inability to keep it. He was
+Ralph Jacobus Fairbanks. Broke at the time, he was seeking the quickest
+way to a “comeback.”
+
+Foreseeing that the biggest names in copper meant a rush, he had taken a
+look at the little stagnant spring with a green scum that was to give
+the town its name.
+
+“Not enough water in it to do the family washing,” he decided and with
+uncanny talent for seeing opportunity where others would starve to
+death, he was soon peddling water at a dollar a bucket. He had hauled it
+40 miles uphill from Furnace Creek wash.
+
+A hopeful, but late arrival who expected to find the town crowded with
+killers was an undertaker who came with a huge stock of coffins. The
+prospect of a quick turnover seemed to guarantee success, but in two
+years Greenwater had exactly one funeral and he sold but one coffin.
+Disgusted he stacked the caskets in the center of his shop; left and was
+never again heard of.
+
+Fairbanks came into town one day with his sweat-stained 16 mule team,
+noticed the abandoned coffins, picked out the largest and best and gave
+Greenwater its first watering trough, which was used as long as the town
+lasted.
+
+Fairbanks soon made enough money to acquire a hotel, store, and a bar,
+which became a popular rendezvous. Fairbanks was born of well-to-do
+parents, in a covered wagon en route to Utah in 1857. Of the thousands
+who flocked into Greenwater, only he and Charles Brown were to remain in
+Death Valley country and wrest fortunes from America’s most desolate
+region. To Greenwater he brought his wife, Celestia Abigail, who shared
+his spirit of adventure, but fortunately for him she possessed a caution
+which he lacked. Among their children was a beautiful and vivacious
+daughter, Stella.
+
+Fairbanks, who was of the quick, go-getting type, didn’t care for Brown.
+Born in the North, he was critical of the slow-moving, silent, young
+Georgian and unacquainted with the Deep South’s drawl, he referred to
+him as “that damned foreigner.”
+
+The reputation of the Fairbanks camaraderie spread, and Mrs. Fairbanks,
+who understood the longing of a youngster for a home-cooked meal,
+invited Brown to dinner.
+
+There were other young fortune seekers in Greenwater who were also
+occasional guests at the Fairbanks dinners—among them a Yankee from
+Maine—Harry Oakes, of whom the world was to hear later. Allen Gillman,
+known as the Rattlesnake Kid, because of his stalking rattlesnakes to
+indulge his hobby of making hat bands and trinkets, later to become
+associated with Bernarr McFadden. Wealthy young mining engineers. Bank
+clerks with futures. Brown apparently had none.
+
+“He’ll get out of the country like he came in—afoot and broke,” rivals
+told Stella. So when romance came, there was still a long trail ahead.
+
+Then came Greenwater’s first warning of trouble. A few miners were laid
+off; a few padlocks appeared on a few cabins; a few merchants
+complained. Soon it was noticed that the tinny pianos from which
+slim-fingered “professors” swept the two-step and the waltz were
+gathering dust while the girls lolled in empty honkies. But when Diamond
+Tooth Lil padlocked her door and joined the rush to a new copper strike
+at Crackerjack in the Avawatz Mountains the wiser knew that Greenwater
+was through.
+
+With no guests Fairbanks told off on his fingers, departed patrons, mine
+owners, doctors, lawyers. “Just Charlie left. Wonder what’s keeping
+him?” Celestia Abigail knew. She knew that the big Georgian was
+desperately in love with Stella and didn’t care how many of her suitors
+left.
+
+With mines closing and few official duties, Brown loaded a burro with
+supplies and with Joe Yerrin went on a prospecting trip. Their course
+led across Death Valley. They were caught in a heat that was a record,
+even for the Big Sink, and ran out of water. Fortunately they were
+within a few miles of Surveyor’s Well—a stagnant hole north of
+Stovepipe. The burros were also suffering and Brown and Yerrin staggered
+to water barely in time to escape death.
+
+The well there is dug on a slant and looking down they saw a prospector
+kneeling at the water, filling a canteen and blocking passage.
+
+“Reckon you fellows are thirsty,” he greeted. “I’ll hand you up a drink.
+Have to strain it though. Full of wiggletails.” He pulled his shirt tail
+out of his pants, stretched it over a stew pan, strained the water
+through it and handed the pan up to Brown. “Now it’s fit to drink,” he
+said proudly.
+
+“It was no time to be finicky,” Charlie said. “We drank.”
+
+Brown and Yerrin combed hill and canyon but failed to find anything of
+value. Yerrin knew of another place. “You can have it,” Brown said. “I
+left a good claim.”
+
+Yerrin eyed him a long moment, then grinned: “Stella, huh?”
+
+The sage in Greenwater streets was rank now and again Ralph Fairbanks
+looked out over the dying town. “Ma, we’re getting out,” he said. He
+emptied his pockets on the table; counted the cash. “Ten dollars and
+thirty cents. Can’t get far on that—”
+
+He was interrupted by a knock at the door. There stood a stranger who
+wanted dinner and lodging for the night. During the evening the guest
+disclosed that he was en route to his mining claim near a place called
+Shoshone, 38 miles south. It was near a spring with plenty of water,
+warm, but usable. He wanted to put 50 miners to work but first he had to
+find someone willing to go there and board them.
+
+“Maybe we’d go,” Fairbanks said. “What’ll you pay for board?”
+
+“A dollar and a half a day. Figures around $2250 a month.”
+
+Ralph looked at Ma. She nodded. “It’s a deal,” he said.
+
+The next morning the guest left.
+
+Fairbanks turned to his wife. “I can haul these abandoned shacks down
+there in no time. Charlie’s not working, I can get him to help.”
+
+Ralph Fairbanks had stayed with Greenwater to the bitter end. Now he
+hauled it away.
+
+The road to the new site was over rough desert, gutted with dry washes.
+Brown slept in the brush, put the shacks up while Fairbanks went for
+others. Both worked night and day to get the place ready. Finally they
+had lodging for 50 men, a dining room, and quarters for the family. With
+$2250 a month they could afford a chef and Ma could take it easy. Stella
+could go Outside to a girl’s school.
+
+Then like a bolt of lightning came the bad news. The Greenwater guest,
+they learned, was just an engaging liar, with no mine, no men. He was
+never heard of again.
+
+Without a dollar they were marooned in one of the world’s most desolate
+areas. Stumped, Fairbanks looked at Brown. “I’ve been rich. I’ve been
+poor. But this is below the belt. What’ll we do?”
+
+“I can get a job with the Borax Company,” Brown said. “But you?”
+
+“We have that canned goods we brought to feed that liar’s hired men.
+I’ll figure some way to live in this God-forsaken hole.”
+
+From the dining room, prepared for the $2250 monthly income, he lugged a
+table, set it outside the door facing the road. Then he went to the
+pantry, filled a laundry basket with the cans of pork and beans,
+tomatoes, corned beef, and milk brought from Greenwater. He arranged
+them on the table, wrenched a piece of shook from a packing crate and on
+it painted in crude letters the word, “Store.” He propped it on the
+table and went inside. “Ma,” he announced, “we’re in business.”
+
+You could have hauled the entire stock and the table away in a
+wheelbarrow and every person in the country for 100 miles in either
+direction laid end to end would not have reached as far as a bush league
+batter could knock a baseball.
+
+The wheelbarrow load of canned goods went to the Indians living in the
+brush and the prospectors camped at the spring. Another replaced it and
+the “store” moved then into the dining room prepared for the
+non-existent boarders. Powder, a must on the list of a desert store, was
+added. The desert man, they knew, needed only a few items but they must
+be good. Overalls honestly stitched. Bacon well cured. Shoes sturdily
+built for hard usage.
+
+“If we sell a shoddy shirt, an inferior pick or shovel to one of our
+customers,” they told the wholesaler, “we will never again sell anything
+to him nor to any of his friends.”
+
+Soon the prospectors were telling other prospectors they met on the
+trails: “Square shooters—those fellows. Speak our language....” The
+squaws and the bucks told other squaws and bucks. Soon new trails cut
+across the desert to Shoshone and soon the store outgrew the dining room
+in the Fairbanks residence.
+
+From Zabriskie, now an abandoned borax town a few miles south of
+Shoshone, an old saloon and boarding house was cut into sections and
+hauled to Shoshone. It had been previously hauled from Greenwater where
+it had served as a labor union hall and club house. It was deposited
+directly across the road from the original store.
+
+So began in 1910 an empire of trade that is almost unbelievable.
+
+Charlie had at last coaxed the right answer from Stella but there wasn’t
+enough in the business at the start to support two families, plus the
+score of children and grandchildren of Fairbanks. At Greenwater he had
+known all the moguls of mining and he had only to ask for a job to get
+one. Retaining his interest in the Shoshone store he became
+superintendent of the Pacific Borax Company’s important Lila C. mine and
+thus formed a connection which grew into valuable friendships with the
+executives. The Shoshone business grew and soon required his entire time
+and that of Stella.
+
+Born in Richfield, Utah, Stella Brown grew up in Death Valley country
+and a reel of her life would show an exciting story of triumph over life
+in the raw; in desolate deserts and in boom towns where bandits and
+bawdy women rubbed elbows with the virtuous, millionaire with crook, and
+caste was unknown. If a girl went wrong; if an Indian was starving; a
+widow in need—there you would find her. Some day somebody will write the
+inspiring story of Stella Brown.
+
+Not all those who were told to see Charlie were seeking directions or
+suffering from toothache. When General Electric desperately needed talc,
+its agents were so advised. When Harold Ickes came out to promote
+President Roosevelt’s conservation ideas and officials of the War
+Department sought critical material, they too were given the old
+familiar advice and took it, and one day I saw the President of the
+Southern Pacific Railroad stand around for an hour while Charlie waited
+for a Pahrump Indian to make up his mind about a pair of overalls.
+
+Today the store that started on a kitchen table requires a large
+refrigerating plant and lighting system, three large warehouses, two
+tunnels in a hill. About a dozen employees work in shifts from seven in
+the morning till ten at night, to take care of the store, cabins, and
+cafe. Three big trucks haul oil, gas, powder, and provisions to mines in
+the region. Out of canyon, dry wash, and over dunes they come for every
+imaginable commodity, and get it.
+
+A millionaire city man who vacations there sat down on the slab bench
+beside Brown, aimlessly whittling. “Listen, Charlie,” he said. “Why
+don’t you get out of this desolation and move to the city where you can
+enjoy yourself?”
+
+“Hell—” Charlie muttered, and went on with his whittling.
+
+The new store stands upon the site where Ma Fairbanks’ kitchen table
+displayed the canned goods brought from Greenwater. Modern to the minute
+and air-cooled it would be a credit to any city.
+
+
+Again I heard the old familiar, “See Charlie,” and while he was telling
+someone how to get to a place no one around had ever heard of, I glanced
+over the Chalfant Register, a Bishop paper, and noticed a letter it had
+published from a lady in Wisconsin seeking information about a brother
+who had gone to Greenwater more than 40 years ago. She had never heard
+of him since.
+
+When Charlie joined me I called his attention to the letter. “I saw it,”
+he said. “Nobody answered and the editor sent the letter to me. I have
+just written her that the brother who came to find out what happened,
+died suddenly at Tonopah, only a few hours by auto from Greenwater. The
+other brother was killed in a saloon. I knew him and the man who killed
+him.”
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XVI
+                          Long Man, Short Man
+
+
+Before Tonopah, the first, and Greenwater, the last of the boom camps,
+Indians roaming the desert from Utah westward were showing trails to two
+hikos, who were to become symbols for the reckless courage needed to
+exist in the wasteland. They were known as Long Man and Short Man.
+
+Previous pages have given part of the story of Long Man.
+
+Coming into Death Valley country in the late Nineties, Ralph Jacobus
+Fairbanks wanted to know its water holes, trails, and landmarks. He
+hired Panamint Tom, brother of Hungry Bill, as a guide. Because Tom’s
+name was linked with Bill’s in stories of missing men, Fairbanks carried
+his six-gun.
+
+Panamint Tom was also armed. When they reached the rim of Death Valley
+and started down, Fairbanks said, “Tom, this is Indian country. You know
+it. I don’t. You go first....”
+
+Taking no chance on a surprise night attack, he directed the layout of
+the camp so that their beds were safely apart. Each slept with his gun.
+Around the camp fire, Tom nonchalantly confessed that he’d had to kill
+five white men.
+
+The mission accomplished, they started back. When they came out of the
+valley Tom said, “Long Man, this is white man’s country. You know it. I
+don’t. You go first.” In after years, referring to their trip, Tom said,
+“Long Man, you heap ’fraid that time.” “I was,” Fairbanks confessed. “Me
+too,” Tom said.
+
+When the Goldfield strike was made, Fairbanks saw that a supply station
+on the main line of travel was a surer way to wealth than the gamble of
+digging. He knew of a ranch with good water and luxuriant wild hay at
+Ash Meadows. Hay was worth $200 a ton. The owner had abandoned the
+ranch, however, and moved into the hills. Fairbanks could get little
+information concerning his whereabouts. “Up there somewhere,” he was
+told, with a gesture indicating 50 miles of sky line. But he wanted the
+hay and started out and by patient inquiry located his man just before
+daylight on the second day. “What will you give for it?” the man asked.
+
+“Well,” Fairbanks parried, “you know it’ll cost me as much as the ranch
+is worth to get rid of that wild grass.” Having only a vague idea of its
+real worth he had decided to offer $4000, but sensed the man’s eagerness
+to sell and started to offer $1000. Suddenly it occurred to him that
+someone else might have made an offer. “I’ll go $2000 and not a nickel
+more.”
+
+“You’ve bought a ranch,” the owner said.
+
+Elated, Fairbanks wrote a contract by candlelight on the spot. Both
+signed and they started back to find a notary. “I determined the fellow
+should not get out of my sight until the deed was recorded. If he wanted
+a drink of water, so did I. If he wished to speak to someone, I wanted a
+word with the same man.”
+
+Finally the deal was closed and Fairbanks started home. Outside, he met
+Ed Metcalf, chuckling.
+
+“What’s so funny, Ed?”
+
+Metcalf pointed to the departing seller. “He was just telling me about
+being worried to death all morning for fear a sucker he’d found would
+get out of his sight. He’s been trying to unload his ranch for $500 and
+some idiot gave him $2000.”
+
+Fairbanks also operated a freighting service to the boom towns in the
+gold belt as far north as Goldfield and Tonopah. Rates were fantastic
+and he made a fortune. He opened Beatty’s first cafe in a tent.
+
+Money was plentiful and after a trip with a 16 mule team over rough
+roads to Goldfield, he was ready for a relaxing change to poker. When
+the white chips are $25, the reds $50, and the blues $500 the game is
+not for pikers and he would bet $10,000 as calmly as he would 10 cents.
+
+In such a game one night he found himself sitting beside a player who
+had removed his big overcoat with wide patch pockets and hung it on his
+chair. Fairbanks noticed the fellow had a habit of gathering in the
+discards when he wasn’t betting and his deal would follow. He also
+noticed intermittent movements of the fellow’s deft fingers to the big
+patch pocket and soon saw that every ace in the deck reposed in the
+pocket.
+
+Later in the game, Fairbanks opened a jackpot. Every man stayed. The
+crook raised discreetly and most of the players stayed. Fairbanks bet
+$1000.
+
+“Have to raise you $5000,” the crook said.
+
+Fairbanks met the raise. “... and it’ll cost you $5000 more,” he said
+evenly.
+
+With the confidence that came from the cached aces, the sharper shoved
+out the five, smiled exultantly as he spread four kings and a deuce and
+reached for the pot.
+
+“Not so fast,” Fairbanks said as he laid four aces and a ten on the
+table.
+
+The crook gave him a quick look. Fairbanks’ eyes were steady. Neither
+said a word. The crook couldn’t. He knew that Fairbanks’ long fingers
+had found the big patch pocket.
+
+When three men and a jackass no longer made a crowd in Shoshone, Ralph
+Fairbanks became restless. With a population of 20—half of it his own
+progeny, he felt that civilization was closing in on him. “Charlie, I’ve
+been in one place too long....” He had now become “Dad Fairbanks” to all
+who knew him.
+
+The automobile was being increasingly used in desert travel and
+transcontinental trips were no longer a daring adventure or the result
+of a bet. Sixty miles south of Shoshone there was a wretched road that
+pitched down the washboard slope of one range into a basin, then up the
+gully-crossed slopes of another. Part of the transcontinental highway,
+it was a headache to the traveler. Radiators usually boiled down hill
+and up.
+
+To this desolate spot went Dad Fairbanks. The hot blasts from the dunes
+of the Devil’s Playground and the dry bed of Soda Lake made summer a
+hell and the freezing winds from Providence Mountains turned it into a
+Siberian winter.
+
+Here in 1928 Dad Fairbanks built cabins and a store and installed a gas
+pump. Water was hauled in. “Coming or going,” he said, “when they reach
+this place they’ve just got to stop, cool the engine, and fill up for
+the hill ahead.” The place is Baker on Highway 91.
+
+Here, as at Shoshone, sales technique was tossed into the ash can.
+Stopping for dinner one day I met Dad coming out of the dining room.
+“How’s the fare?” I asked.
+
+“Are you hungry?”
+
+“Hungry as a bear....”
+
+“All right. Go in. A hungry man can stand anything.” Then in an
+undertone he added: “Employment agent sent me the world’s worst cook.
+Take eggs.”
+
+Later as we talked in the sheltered driveway a Rolls-Royce limousine
+drove up and a well-fed and smartly tailored tourist stepped out and
+spoke to Dad: “Do you know me?” he asked.
+
+Dad looked at him hesitantly. “Face is familiar.”
+
+“You loaned me $300, 25 years ago.”
+
+“I loaned a lotta fellows money.”
+
+“But I never paid it back.”
+
+“A helluva lot of ’em didn’t,” Dad said.
+
+The stranger reached into his pocket, pulled $1000 from a roll and
+handed it to Dad. “I’m Harry Oakes,” he said. “Where’s Ma?”
+
+So they went over to Dad’s house and with Ma Fairbanks who had shared
+all of Dad’s fortunes, good and bad, they sat down and Oakes talked of
+the long trail that led from 300 borrowed dollars to an annual income of
+five million.
+
+Harry Oakes had gone to Canada and learning that the legal title to a
+mining claim would expire at midnight on a certain date, he and his
+partner W. G. Wright sat up in a temperature of forty below, to relocate
+the Lakeshore Mine—Canada’s richest gold property.
+
+Born in Maine, Harry Oakes became a subject of England and was at this
+time Canada’s richest citizen, with an estimated fortune of
+$200,000,000.
+
+It was a long way from the Niagara palace back to Greenwater and
+Shoshone and as Ma Fairbanks and Dad and Harry sat in the plain little
+desert cottage, I couldn’t keep from wondering why a man with
+$200,000,000 would wait 25 years to repay that $300.
+
+In his native town of Sangerville in Maine, Harry Oakes was criticized
+when, as a youngster with every opportunity to pursue a successful
+career according to the staid Maine formula, he became excited by gold.
+“Quick easy money.” “Just a dreamer.” He talked big, acted big, and was
+big.
+
+But Harry Oakes started out in life to make a fortune by finding a gold
+mine and you can’t laugh aside the determination and courage with which
+he stuck to his purpose until he succeeded.
+
+Dad Fairbanks spent nearly 50 years in Death Valley country and it is a
+bit ironical that at last, the Baker climate drove him from the desert
+to Santa Paula and later, of all places, to Hollywood.
+
+“I should never have believed it of you,” I kidded.
+
+“Hell—” Dad retorted, “I wanted solitude. Haven’t you got enough sense
+to know that the lonesomest place on Godamighty’s earth is a city?”
+
+He died in 1943 and at the funeral were the state’s greatest men and its
+humblest—bankers, lawyers, doctors, beggarmen, muckers and miners, and
+with them, those he loved best—sun-baked fellows from the towns and the
+gulches along the burro trails. No man who has lived in Death Valley
+country did more to put the region on the must list of the American
+tourist and none won more of the regard and affections of the people.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XVII
+                          Shorty Frank Harris
+
+
+No history of Death Valley has been written in this century without
+mention of the Short Man—Frank (Shorty) Harris—and none can be. Previous
+pages have given most of his story. After his death at least two hurried
+writers who never saw him have stated that Shorty discovered no mines,
+knew little of the country.
+
+From a page of notes made before I had ever met him, I find this record:
+“Stopped at Independence to see George Naylor, early Inyo county sheriff
+and now its treasurer. We talked of early prospectors. Naylor said: ‘I
+have known all of the old time burro men and have the records. Shorty
+Harris has put more towns on the map and more taxable property on the
+assessors’ books than any of them.’”
+
+I first met Shorty at Shoshone. Entering the store one day, Charles
+Brown told me there was a fellow outside I ought to know, and in a
+moment I was looking into keen steady eyes—blue as water in a canyon
+pool—and in another Shorty Harris was telling me how to sneak up on
+$10,000,000. Thus began an acquaintance which was to lead me through
+many years from one end of Death Valley to the other, with Shorty,
+mentor, friend, and guide.
+
+Of course I had heard of him. Who hadn’t? In the gold country of western
+deserts one could find a few who had never heard of Cecil Rhodes or John
+Hays Hammond, but none who had not heard of Shorty Harris. Wherever
+mining men gathered, the mention of his name evoked the familiar, “That
+reminds me,” and the air thickened with history, laughter, and lies.
+
+He was five feet tall, quick of motion. Hands and feet small. Skin soft
+and surprisingly fair. Muscles hard as bull quartz. With a mask of
+ignorance he concealed a fine intelligence reserved for intimate friends
+in moments of repose.
+
+It is regrettable that since Shorty’s death, writers who never saw him
+have given pictures of him which by no stretch of the imagination can be
+recognized by those who had even a slight acquaintance with him. Authors
+of books properly examine the material of those who have written other
+books. In the case of Shorty this was eagerly done—so eagerly in fact,
+that each portrayal is the original picture altered according to the
+ability of the one who tailors the tale. All are interesting but few
+have any relation to truth.
+
+Shorty Harris was so widely publicized by writers in the early part of
+the century that when the radio was invented, he was a “natural” for
+playlets and columnists. It was natural also that the iconoclast appear
+to set the world right. He employed Shorty to guide him through Death
+Valley. “I want to write a book,” he explained, “and I have only three
+weeks to gather material.”
+
+The trip ended sooner. “What happened?” I asked Shorty when I read the
+book and was startled to see in it a statement that Shorty became lost;
+had never found a mine; and never even looked for one.
+
+“Did he say that?” Shorty laughed.
+
+“And more of the same,” I said.
+
+“Well, let’s let it go for what it’s worth.... He bellyached from the
+minute we set out.”
+
+Those who knew Shorty best—Dad Fairbanks, Charles Brown, Bob Montgomery,
+George Naylor, H. W. Eichbaum, and the old timers on the trails had
+entirely different impressions. There was, however, around the barrooms
+of Beatty and other border villages a breed of later
+comers—“professional” old timers always waiting and often succeeding in
+exchanging “history” for free drinks. Though they may have never known
+Shorty in person, they were not lacking in yarns about him and rarely
+failed to get an audience.
+
+There were also among Shorty’s friends a few who had another attitude.
+“What has he ever done that I haven’t?” the answer being that nothing
+had been written about them.
+
+With variations the original pattern became the pattern for the
+succeeding writer. In the interest of accuracy it is not amiss to say
+that Shorty Harris was not buried standing up. The writer saw him
+buried. It is not true that he ever protested the removal of the road
+from the site of the place where he wished to be buried, because he
+never knew that he would be buried there. Nor did he have the remotest
+idea that a monument would be erected to him, because the idea of the
+monument was born after his death, as related elsewhere.
+
+He did not leave Harrisburg on July 4, 1905 to get drunk at Ballarat.
+Instead, he went to Rhyolite to find Wild Bill Corcoran, his grubstaker.
+
+He did enjoy the yarns attributed to him and their publication in
+important periodicals. But he was also painfully shy and ill at ease
+away from his home. Even at the annual Death Valley picnics held at
+Wilmington, near Los Angeles, he could never be persuaded to face the
+crowds.
+
+One cannot laugh aside the part he played nor the monument that honors
+one of God’s humblest. His strike at Rhyolite brought two railroads
+across the desert, gave profitable employment to thousands of men, added
+extra shifts in steel mills and factories making heavy machinery and
+those of tool makers. The building trades felt it, banks, security
+exchanges, and scores of other industries over the nation—all because
+Shorty Harris went up a canyon. And it is not amiss to ask if these
+historians did their jobs as well.
+
+At my home it was difficult to get Shorty to accept invitations to
+dinners to which he was often invited by service clubs, but in the
+Ballarat cabin he was as sure of himself as the MacGregor with a foot
+upon his native heath and an eye on Ben Lomond.
+
+His passion for prospecting was fanatical. I asked him once if he would
+choose prospecting as a career if he had his life to live over.
+
+“I wouldn’t change places with the President of the United States. My
+only regret is that I didn’t start sooner. When I go out, every time my
+foot touches the ground, I think ‘before the sun goes down I’ll be worth
+$10,000,000.’”
+
+“But you don’t get it,” I reminded him.
+
+He stared at me with a sort of “you’re-too-dumb” look. “Who in the hell
+wants $10,000,000? It’s the game, man—the game.”
+
+Nor is the picture of his profligacy altogether true. Despite Shorty’s
+disregard for money he had a canniness that made him cache something
+against the rainy day. At Lone Pine Charlie Brown was packing Shorty’s
+suit case before taking him to a doctor. “Shorty, what’s this lump in
+the lining of your vest?”
+
+“Oh, there was a hole in it. Poor job of mending I guess,” Shorty
+answered guilelessly.
+
+“I’ll see,” Charlie said and ripping a few stitches removed $600 in
+currency.
+
+Shorty’s last years furnish a story of a man too tough to die. He had
+had three major operations, when in 1933 I received the following
+telegram: “Wall fell on me. Hurry. Bring doctor. Shorty Harris.” It had
+been sent by Fred Gray from Trona, 27 miles from Ballarat, nearest
+telegraph station.
+
+My wife and I hurried through rain, snow, sleet; over washed out desert
+and mountain roads. Outside the cabin in the dusk, shivering in a cold
+wind, we found two or three of Shorty’s friends and Charles and Mrs.
+Brown, who had also made a mad dash of 150 miles over roads—some of
+which hadn’t been traveled in 30 years.
+
+Puttering around his cabin, Shorty had jerked at a wire anchored in the
+walls and brought tons of adobe down upon himself. He was literally dug
+out, his ribs crushed, face black with abrasions. With rapidly
+developing pneumonia he had lain for 60 hours without medical attention
+and with nothing to relieve pain. We learned later from Dr. Walter
+Johnson, who had preceded us, that if a hospital had been within a block
+it would have been fatal to move him. All agreed that Death sat on
+Shorty’s bedside.
+
+“A cat has only nine lives,” Fred Gray said gravely, and outside in the
+gathering gloom we planned his funeral. Because of the isolation of
+Ballarat and lack of communication we arranged that when the end came,
+Fred Gray would notify Brown and bring the body down into Death Valley
+for burial. There we would meet the hearse.
+
+Because bodies decompose quickly in that climate, time was important.
+While we planned these details, my wife, who had been at Shorty’s
+bedside, joined us. “Shorty’s not going to die,” she said. “He’s
+planning that trip up Signal Mountain you and he have been talking
+about.”
+
+I tiptoed into the room. He was staring at the ceiling, seeing faraway
+canyons; the yellow fleck in a broken rock. Suddenly he spoke: “I’m
+losing a thousand dollars a day lying here. Why, that ledge—”
+
+A week after returning to our home we received another telegram from
+Trona asking that we come for him. He had insisted upon being laid in
+the bed of a pickup truck and taken across the Slate Range to Trona,
+where we met him.
+
+At our home he lay on his back for weeks, fed with a spoon. Always
+talking of putting another town on the map. Always losing a million
+dollars a day. He was miraculously but slowly recovering when an
+Associated Press dispatch bearing a Lone Pine date made front page
+headlines with an announcement of his death.
+
+Though the report was quickly corrected, his presence at our house
+brought reporters, photographers, old friends, and the merely curious.
+At the time the Pacific Coast Borax Company’s N.B.C. program was
+featuring stories based on his experiences over a nation-wide hook-up.
+Among the callers also were moguls of mining and tycoons of industry who
+had stopped at the Ballarat cabin to fall under the spell of his ever
+ready yarns.
+
+Among these guests, one stands out.
+
+It was a hot summer day when I saw on the lawn what appeared to be a big
+bear, because the squat, bulky figure was enclosed in fur. Answering the
+door bell I looked into twinkling eyes and an ingratiating smile. “They
+told me in Ballarat that Shorty Harris was here.” I invited him in.
+
+“I’ll just shed this coat,” he said, stripping off the bearskin garment.
+“... sorta heavy for a man going on 80.” He laid it aside. “It’s double
+lined. Fur inside and out. You see, I sleep in it. Crossed three
+mountain ranges in that coat before I got here. May as well take this
+other one off too.” He removed another heavy overcoat, revealing a cord
+around his waist. “Keep this one tied close. Less bulky....”
+
+Under a shorter coat was a heavy woolen shirt and his overalls concealed
+two pairs of pants. He went on: “I was with Shorty at Leadville. My
+name’s Pete Harmon. We ought to be rich—both of us. Why, I sold a hole
+for $2500 in 1878. Thought I was smart. They’ve got over $100,000,000
+outa that hole. I was at Bridgeport when I heard Shorty was sick, so I
+says, ‘I’ll just step down to Ballarat and see him.’ (The ‘step’ was 298
+miles.) When I got there Bob Warnack tells me he’s in Los Angeles. When
+I get there they tell me he’s with you. So I just stepped out here.”
+
+He had “stepped” 481 miles to see his friend.
+
+I ushered him in and left them alone. After an hour I noticed Pete
+outside, smoking. I went out and urged him to return and smoke inside,
+but he refused. “It’s not manners,” he insisted.
+
+Later I happened to look out the window and saw him empty the contents
+of a small canvas sack into his hand. There were a few dimes and nickels
+and two bills. He unfolded the currency. One was a twenty. The other, a
+one. He put the coins in the sack and came inside. A few moments later,
+from an adjacent room I heard his soft, lowered voice: “Shorty, I’m
+eatin’ reg’lar now and got a little besides. I reckon you’re kinda shy.
+You take this.”
+
+“No—no, Pete. I’m getting along fine....”
+
+I fancy there was a scurry among the angels to make that credit for Pete
+Harmon.
+
+Late in the afternoon Pete donned his coats. “I’d better be going. I’ve
+got a lotta things on hand. A claim in the Argus. When the money comes
+in, well—I always said I was going to build a scenic railroad right on
+the crest of Panamint Range. Best view of Death Valley. It’ll pay. How
+far is it to San Diego?”
+
+“A hundred and forty miles....”
+
+“Well, since I’m this far along I’ll just step down and see my old
+partner. Take care of Shorty....” And down the road he went.
+
+With humility I watched his passage, hoping that the good God would go
+with him and somehow I felt that of all those with fame and wealth or of
+high degree who had gone from that house, none had left so much in my
+heart as Pete.
+
+During this period of convalescence Shorty was often guest in homes of
+luxury and when at last I took him to Ballarat I was curious to see what
+his reaction would be to the squalor of the crumbling cabin.
+
+When we stepped from the car, he noticed Camel, the blind burro drowsing
+in the shade of a roofless dobe. “Old fellow,” he said, “it’s dam’ good
+to see _you_ again....” I unloaded the car, brought water from the well
+and sat down to rest. Shorty sat in a rickety rocker braced with baling
+wire. I regarded with amusement the old underwear which he’d stuffed
+into broken panes; the bare splintered floor; the cracked iron stove
+that served both for cooking and heating. The wood box beside it. The
+tin wash pan on a bench at the door.
+
+Then I noticed Shorty was also appraising the things about—the hole in
+the roof; the box nailed to the wall that served as a cupboard. A
+half-burned candle by his sagging bed. For a long time he glanced
+affectionately from one familiar object to another and finally spoke:
+“Will, haven’t I got a dam’ fine home?”
+
+For ages poets have sung, orators have lauded, but so far as I’m
+concerned, Shorty said it better.
+
+The last orders from the surgeon had been, “Complete rest for three
+months.”
+
+In the late afternoon we moved our chairs outside. The sun still shone
+in the canyons and after he had seen that all his peaks were in place,
+he turned to me: “I’m losing $5,000,000 a day sitting here. Soon as
+you’re rested, we’ll start. You’ll be in shape by day after tomorrow,
+won’t you?”
+
+I restrained a gasp as he pointed to the side of a gorge 8000 feet up on
+Signal Mountain. “No trip at all....”
+
+No argument could convince him that the trip was foolhardy and on the
+third day we started through Hall’s Canyon opposite the Indian Ranch.
+The ascent from the canyon is so steep that in many places we had to
+crawl on hands and knees. The three and a half miles were made in seven
+hours, but on the return the inevitable happened. Shorty, exhausted,
+staggered from the trail and collapsed. When he rose, he wobbled, but
+managed to reach a bush and rolled under it. I ran to his side. It
+seemed the end. “You go ahead,” he said weakly. “I’m through.”
+
+I had given him all my water and exacting a promise that he would remain
+under the bush, I started for help at the Indian Ranch, to bring him
+out.
+
+Coming up, I had paid no attention to the trail and was uncertain of my
+way—which was further confused by criss-crossed trails of wild burros
+and mountain sheep. Coming to a canyon that forked, I was not sure which
+to take and panicked with fear took a sudden uncalculated choice and
+started up a trail. The desert gods must have guided my feet, for it
+proved to be the right one and an hour later I came upon the green
+seepage of water.
+
+I dug a hole; let the scum run off then drank slowly and lay down to
+rest. In my last conscious moment a huge rattler passed within a few
+inches of my face. But rattlers were unimportant then and I went to
+sleep.
+
+The swish of brush awoke me and I saw Shorty staggering down the trail.
+He fell beside the water and was instantly asleep. Time I knew, was the
+measure of life and I allowed him twenty minutes to rest, then awoke him
+and made him go in front. On a ledge, he slumped again, his body hanging
+over the cliff with a 1000 foot fall to rocks below.
+
+I managed to catch him by the seat of his trousers as he began to slip,
+and dragged him back on the trail. Somehow I got him to the bottom.
+There the canyon widens upon a level area covered with dense growth.
+Walking ahead I suddenly missed him. He had crawled from the trail and
+it required an hour to find him and this I did by the noise of his
+rattly breathing.
+
+I half carried, half dragged him to the car and lifted him in. He was
+asleep before I could close the door and remained unconscious for the
+entire 11 miles of corduroy road to Ballarat. There Fred Gray and Bob
+Warnack lifted him from the car and laid him on his bed. None of us
+believed that Shorty Harris would ever leave that bed alive.
+
+The next morning I tiptoed softly out of the room, went over to the old
+saloon and had breakfast with Tom, the caretaker. Afterward we sat
+outside smoking and talking of Hungry Hattie’s feuding and her sister’s
+mining deals, when we heard steady thumping sounds coming from Shorty’s
+place. We looked. Bareheaded, Shorty Harris was chopping wood.
+
+Shorty was born near Providence, Rhode Island, July 2, 1856. He had only
+a hazy memory of his parents. His father, a shoemaker, died impoverished
+when Shorty was six years old. “... I went to live with my aunt. If she
+couldn’t catch me doing something, she figured I’d outsmarted her and
+beat me up on general principles.”
+
+At nine he ran away and obtained work in the textile mills of Governor
+William Sprague, dipping calico. The village priest taught him to read
+and write and apart from this, his only school was the alley. The
+curriculum of the alley is hunger, tears, and pain but somehow in that
+alley he found time to play and learned that with play came laughter.
+Thenceforth life to Shorty Harris was just one long playday.
+
+In 1876 he started West and crawled out of a boxcar in Dodge City,
+Kansas. About were stacks of buffalo hides, bellowing cattle,
+“chippies,” gamblers, cow hands, and a chance for youngsters who had
+come out of alleys.
+
+“... Among those I remember at Dodge City were my friends Wyatt Earp and
+a thin fellow with a cough. If he liked you he’d go to hell for you. He
+was Doc Holliday—the coldest killer in the West. I had a job in a livery
+stable. Job was all right, but too much gunplay. Cowboys shooting up the
+town. Gamblers shooting cowboys.”
+
+Flushed with his pay check, Shorty wandered into a saloon and met one of
+the percentage girls—a lovely creature, not altogether bad. They danced
+and Shorty suggested a stroll in the moonlight. And soon Shorty was in
+love.
+
+“Shorty,” she asked, “why be a sucker? Why don’t you go to Leadville?
+You might find a good claim.”
+
+“I’m broke,” he told her.
+
+“I’ve got some money,” she said, and reached into her purse.
+
+“I’m no mac,” he snapped.
+
+Finally she thrust the bills into his pocket.
+
+At Leadville he went up a gulch. Luck was kind. He found a good claim
+and going into Leadville sold it for $15,000. Later it produced
+millions. Within a week he was penniless. “Why, all I’ve got to do is to
+go up another gulch,” he told sympathetic friends.
+
+On this trip his feet were frozen and he was carried out on the back of
+his partner. Taken to the hospital, the surgeon told him that only the
+amputation of both feet could save his life.
+
+Telling a group of friends about it in the Ballarat cabin later, Shorty
+of course had to add a few details of his own: “Dan Driscoll came to see
+me and I told him what the sawbones said. ‘Why hell,’ Dan says. ‘Won’t
+be nothing left of you. You’ve got to get outa here. When that nurse
+goes, I’ll take you to a doc who’ll save them feet.’ And the first thing
+I knew I was in the other hospital.
+
+“The doc whetted his meat cleaver, picked up a saw and was about to go
+to work, when he found there was nothing to dope me with. ‘I’ll fix it,’
+Doc says, and wham—he slapped me stiff. I don’t know what he did, but
+when I came to I was good as new.”
+
+After selling a second claim to Haw Tabor, Shorty was again in the money
+and remembered the girl in Dodge City. Returning, he looked her up, took
+her to dinner. They danced and dined and Shorty toasted her in “bubble
+water.” “I reckon everybody in Dodge City thought a caliph had come to
+town. No little girl suffered for new toggery. No bum lacked a tip. In a
+week I was broke again.
+
+“Going down to the freight yard to steal a ride on the rods I met the
+girl and the next I knew, I was begging her to marry me. ‘Shorty, you
+don’t know anything about my past, and still you want to marry me?’
+
+“‘You don’t know anything about my past either,’ I said. But it was no
+go.”
+
+Years afterward when Shorty and I were camped in Hall Canyon, I asked
+him if he would actually have married a girl like her.
+
+“Who am I to count slips?” he bristled. “I did ask her,” and he swabbed
+a tear that had dried fifty years ago.
+
+In 1898, after working for a grubstake he started on the trip that led
+at last to Death Valley, by way of the San Juan country—one of the
+world’s roughest regions. “I walked through Arizona, to Northern
+Mexico—every mile of it desert. A labor strike in Colonel Green’s mines
+threw me out of a job and I started back. Ran out of water and lived
+five days on the juice of a bulbous plant—la Flora Morada. Each bulb has
+a few drops.
+
+“On the Mojave I ran out of water again. Finally saw a mangy old camel
+drinking at a pool. I had enough sense left to know there were no camels
+around and went on till I flopped. A fellow picked me up. I told him I’d
+been so goofy I’d seen a camel and water, but I knew it was just a
+mirage. ‘You damned fool,’ he said. ‘It was a camel and you saw water.
+Hi Jolly turned that camel loose.’”
+
+Shorty reached Tintic, Utah, and from there walked over a waterless
+desert to the Johnnie mine, where he was given shelter, food, and
+clothing.
+
+Bishop Cannon of the Mormon Church sent him into the Panamint to
+monument a gold claim. “I was the only fool they could find to cross
+Death Valley in mid summer. I found the claim but it proved to be
+patented land.”
+
+Shorty was recuperating from his last operation at my home when he came
+into the house one morning with fire in his eyes and a paper in his
+hand. “Read that and let’s get going.” (It has been erroneously stated
+that Shorty couldn’t read. Though he had little schooling and a cataract
+impaired his sight, he could read to the end.)
+
+The paper announced a strike in Tuba Canyon near Ballarat. “Why, I know
+a place nobody ever saw but me and a few eagles....” His losses
+increased from a thousand to a million dollars a day because he wasn’t
+on the job, and in May we started for Ballarat by the longer route
+through Death Valley.
+
+When we reached Jim Dayton’s grave, he asked me to stop and getting out
+of the car, he walked into the brush, returning with a few yellow and
+blue wild flowers, laid them on Dayton’s grave. “God bless you, old
+fellow. You’ll have to move over soon and make room for me.”
+
+Then turning to me, he said: “When I die bury me beside old Jim.”
+Raising his hand and moving his finger as if he were writing the words,
+he added: “Above me write, ‘Here lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket
+jackass prospector.’”
+
+It was his way of saying he had played his game—not by riding over the
+desert with a deluxe camping outfit, but the hard way—with beans and a
+single blanket. He was also saying, I think, goodbye to the Death Valley
+that he loved; its golden dunes, its creeping canyons and pots of gold.
+
+About one o’clock in the morning, Sunday, November 11, 1934, the phone
+awakened me. At the other end of the line was Charles Brown. Shorty
+Harris lay dead at Big Pine. “He just went to sleep and didn’t wake up,”
+Charlie said.
+
+Shorty had died Saturday morning, November 10, and Charlie had arranged
+for the remains to be brought down into Death Valley and buried beside
+James Dayton Sunday afternoon.
+
+Out of Los Angeles, out of towns and settlements, canyons, and hills
+came the largest crowd that had ever assembled in Death Valley, to wait
+at Furnace Creek Ranch for the hearse that would come nearly 200 miles
+over the mountains from Big Pine. It was delayed at every village and by
+burro-men along the road, who wanted a last look upon the face of
+Shorty.
+
+At one o’clock the caravan arrived and then began the procession down
+the valley. The sun was setting and the shadows of the Panamint lay
+halfway across the valley when the grave was reached. Brown had sent
+Ernest Huhn from Shoshone the night previous, a distance of about 60
+miles, to dig the grave.
+
+On the desert a man dies and gets his measure of earth—often with not so
+much as a tarpaulin. With this in mind Ernie had made the hole to fit
+the man, but with the coffin it was a foot too short. While waiting for
+the grave to be lengthened, the casket was opened and in the fading
+twilight Shorty’s friends passed in file about the casket, while the
+Indians, silhouetted against the brush paid silent tribute to him whom
+their fathers and now their children knew as “Short Man.”
+
+So began the first funeral ever held in the bottom of Death Valley.
+Drama, packed into a few moments of a dying day. No discordant ballyhoo.
+No persiflage.... “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want....” A
+bugler stepped beside the grave and silvered notes of taps went over the
+valley. The casket was lowered into the grave as the stars came out, and
+he was covered with the earth he loved. Thoughtful women placed wreaths
+of athol and desert holly and, with his face toward his desert stars,
+Shorty Harris holed-in forever.
+
+Going back to Shoshone with the Browns, I told Charlie of the time I had
+stopped at Jim Dayton’s grave with Shorty. “I made up my mind then that
+I would do something about his last wish. There’s no liar like a
+tombstone, but Shorty deserves a marker.”
+
+“I’ll join you,” Charlie said.
+
+Charlie consulted Park officials and they approved. Chosen to write the
+epitaph, I knew from the moment the task was assigned to me what it
+would be. In order to get the reaction of others to the use of the word
+“jackass” on the monument, I decided to try it out on the Browns. “This
+epitaph,” I said, “may be unconventional, but unless I am mistaken it
+will be quoted around the world.”
+
+I read it. “It’s all right,” Mrs. Brown laughed. Charlie approved. The
+epitaph, as predicted has been quoted and pictures of the plaque
+published around the world.
+
+It has been stated that the Pacific Coast Borax Company paid for the
+monument. Actually it was provided by the Park Service. I had the bronze
+tablet made in Pomona, California, and Charlie Brown insisted that he
+pay for it. “Shorty left a little money,” he said. “Whatever is lacking,
+I will pay myself.”
+
+On March 14, 1936, the monument was dedicated. Streamers of dust rolled
+along every road that led into the Big Sink trailing cars that were
+bringing friends from all walks of life to pay tribute to Shorty. At the
+grave the rich and the famous stood beside the tottering prospector, the
+husky miner, the silent, stoic Indian. Brown was master of ceremonies.
+Telegrams were read from John Hays Hammond and other distinguished
+friends. Old timers, whose memories spanned 30 years, one after another
+wedged through the crowd to tell a funny story that Shorty had told or
+some homely incident of his career.
+
+One was revealing: “We had the no-’countest, low-downest hooch drinking
+loafer on the desert at Ballarat. We called him Tarfinger. He came over
+to Shorty’s cabin one day and said he was hungry. Shorty loaned him
+$5.00. When I heard about it I went over. I said, ‘You know he’s a
+no-good loafing thief.’ I figured I was doing Shorty a favor. Instead,
+he blew up. ‘Well, he can get as hungry as an honest man, can’t he?’”
+
+They understood what O. Henry meant when he sang:
+
+  “Test the man if his heart be
+  In accord with the ultimate plan,
+  That he be not to his marring,
+  Always and utterly man.”
+
+The epitaph Shorty Harris wanted seemed fitting: “_Above me write, ‘Here
+lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket jackass prospector.’_”
+
+As I turned away I thought of the monuments erected to dead Caesars who
+had left trails of blood and ruin. Shorty Harris simply followed a
+jackass into far horizons, and by leaving a smile at every water hole, a
+pleasant memory on every trail, attained a fame which will last as long
+as the annals of Death Valley.
+
+
+
+
+                             Chapter XVIII
+                      A Million Dollar Poker Game
+
+
+Herman Jones, young Texan with keen blue eyes and a guileless grin,
+dropped off the train at Johnnie, a railroad siding, named for the
+nearby Johnnie mine. At the ripe age of 21 he had been through a
+shooting war between New Mexico cattle men, and needing money to marry
+the prettiest girl in the territory, he had come for gold.
+
+Finding it lonesome on his first night he sought the diversion of a
+poker game in a saloon and gambling house. He bought a stack of chips,
+sat down facing the bar and a moment later another stranger entered,
+inquired if he could join the game.
+
+Told that $20 would get a seat, the stranger standing with his back to
+the bar was reaching for his purse when Herman saw the bartender pick up
+a six-gun. With his elbows on the bar and his pistol in two hands, he
+aimed the gun at the back of the stranger’s head and pulled the trigger.
+
+The victim dropped instantly to the floor, his brains scattered on the
+players. The poker session adjourned and Jones was standing outside a
+few moments later when he was tapped on the shoulder. “Come on,” he was
+told. “We’re giving that fellow a floater.” Herman didn’t know what a
+floater was, but decided it was best to obey orders and followed the
+leader into the saloon.
+
+Approaching the bartender, the spokesman pulled out his watch. “Bob,” he
+said quietly. “It’s six o’clock. It won’t be healthy around here after
+6:30.” He set a canteen on the bar and walked out.
+
+Without a word, the bartender pulled off his coat, gathered up the cash,
+called the painted lady attached to his fortune and said, “Sell out for
+what you can get. I’ll let you know where I am.” Picking up his hat he
+left. No one ever learned the cause of the murder or the identity of the
+dead.
+
+With no luck in the Johnnie district or at Greenwater, Herman left the
+latter place on a prospecting trip in partnership with another luckless
+youngster previously mentioned—Harry Oakes.
+
+On a hill overlooking the dry bed of the Amargosa River about four miles
+north of Shoshone, he saw a red outcropping on a hill so steep he
+decided nothing that walked had ever reached the summit, and for that
+reason he might find treasure overlooked.
+
+Herman, being lean and agile, climbed up to investigate. Oakes remained
+under a bush below. Jones returned with a piece of ore showing color. A
+popular song of the period was called “Red Wing” and because he liked
+sentimental ballads, Herman named it for the song. Camp was made at the
+bottom of the hill. Oakes assumed the dish washing job to offset an
+extra hour which Herman agreed to give to work on the trail. Somebody
+told Oakes how to bake bread and while Herman was wheeling muck to the
+dump, Harry experimented with his cookery. The bread turned out to be
+excellent and Oakes took the day off to show it to friends.
+
+“That’s the sort of fellow Harry was,” Herman says. “You just couldn’t
+take him seriously.”
+
+The Red Wing didn’t pay and when abandoned, all they had to show for
+their labor was a stack of bills. On borrowed money, Oakes left the
+country. Herman remained to pay the bills.
+
+
+A few miles east of Shoshone is Chicago Valley, which began in a
+startling swindle, and ended in fame and fortune for one defrauded
+victim.
+
+A convincing crook from the Windy City found government land open to
+entry and called it Chicago Valley. It was a desolate area and the only
+living thing to be seen was an occasional coyote skulking across or a
+vulture flying over. The promoter needed no capital other than a good
+front, glib tongue, and the ability to lie without the flicker of a
+lash.
+
+A few weeks later Chicago widows with meager endowments, scrub women
+with savings, and some who coughed too much from long hours in sweat
+shops began to receive beautifully illustrated pamphlets that described
+a tropical Eden with lush fields, cooling lakes, and more to the point,
+riches almost overnight. For $100 anyone concerned would be located.
+
+Soon people began to swing off The Goose, as the dinky train serving
+Shoshone was called, and head for Chicago Valley. Among the victims was
+a widow named Holmes with a family of attractive, intelligent children.
+One of these was a vivacious, beautiful teen-ager named Helen.
+
+The Holmes were handicapped because of tuberculosis in the family. This
+in fact had induced the widow to invest her savings.
+
+Herman Jones used to ride by the Holmes’ place en route to the Pahrump
+Ranch on hunting trips and owning several burros, he thought the Holmes’
+children would like to have one. Taking the donkey over, he told Helen,
+“You can use him to work the ranch too. Better and faster than a
+hoe....” He brought a harness and a cultivator, showed her how to use
+the implement.
+
+It was inevitable that investors in Chicago Valley would lose their
+time, labor, and money.
+
+Thus when Helen Holmes returned the burro to Herman one day, Herman was
+not surprised when she told him she was on her way to Los Angeles to
+look for a job.
+
+“But what can you do?”
+
+“I wish I knew. I can get a job washing dishes or waiting on table.”
+
+Shortly afterward he heard from her—just a little note saying she was a
+hello girl on a switchboard. “Knew she’d land on her feet,” Herman
+grinned, and having a bottle handy he gurgled a toast to Helen. He had
+to tell the news of course and with each telling he produced the bottle.
+
+So he was in a pleasant mood when somebody suggested a spot of poker. To
+mention poker in Shoshone is to have a game and in a little while Dad
+Fairbanks, Dan Modine, deputy sheriff, Herman, and two or three others
+were shuffling chips over in the Mesquite Club.
+
+Herman had the luck and quit with $700. “Fellows,” he said as he folded
+his money, “take a last look at this roll. You won’t see it again.”
+
+“Oh, you’ll be back,” Fairbanks said.
+
+But Herman didn’t come back. Instead he went to Los Angeles, found Helen
+at the switchboard. She confided excitedly that she had a chance to get
+into the movies as soon as she could get some nice clothes.
+
+“Fine,” Herman said. “When can I see you?” He made a date for dinner,
+had a few more drinks and when he met her he had a comfortable binge and
+a grand idea. “... Listen Helen. You wouldn’t get mad at a fool like me
+if I meant well, would you?”
+
+“Why Herman—you know I wouldn’t,” she laughed.
+
+“I’m a little likkered and it’s kinda personal....”
+
+“But you’re a gentleman, Herman—drunk or sober....”
+
+“I’ve been thinking of this picture business. I nicked Dad Fairbanks in
+a poker game. You know how I am. Lose it all one way or another. You
+take it and buy what you need and it’ll do us both some good.”
+
+The refusal was quick. “It’s sweet of you Herman, but not that. I just
+couldn’t.”
+
+“You can borrow it, can’t you ... so I won’t drink it up?”
+
+The argument won and soon theater goers all over the world were
+clutching their palms as they watched the hair-raising escapes from
+death that pictured “The Perils of Pauline”—the serial that made Helen
+Holmes one of the immortals of the silent films. She died at 58, on July
+8, 1950.
+
+When Charlie Brown became Supervisor in charge of Death Valley roads, he
+wanted a foreman who knew the country. Herman Jones had hunted game,
+treasure, fossils, artifacts of ancient Indians all over Death Valley
+and knew the water courses, the location of subterranean ooze, the dry
+washes which when filled by cloudbursts were a menace. Brown made him
+foreman of the road crew.
+
+At Shoshone, Herman Jones, grey now, was tinkering with a battered Ford
+when a big Rolls-Royce stopped. He looked around at the slam of the
+door, stared a moment at the man approaching, dropped his tools, wiped
+his hands on a greasy rag. “Well, I’ll be—” he laughed. “Harry
+Oakes—where’ve you been all these years?”
+
+“Oh, knocking around,” grinned Oakes. “Wanted to see this country
+again.”
+
+They sat in the shade of a mesquite, talked over Greenwater days and the
+homely memories that leap out of nowhere at such a time.
+
+Oakes noticed Herman’s Ford. Then he pointed to the $20,000 worth of
+long, sleek Rolls-Royce. “Herman, I’m going back to New York in a plane.
+I want to make you a present of that car.”
+
+Herman Jones, dumbfounded for a moment, looked at his Ford, smiled, and
+shook his head. “Thanks just the same, Harry. That old jalopy’s plenty
+good for me.” No amount of persuasion could make him accept it.
+
+Knowing that Herman Jones could use any part of $20,000, I marvelled
+that he didn’t accept the proffered gift. Then I remembered that the
+Redwing had produced only sweat and debts and Jones had paid the debts
+through the bitter years.
+
+In the little town of Swastika in the province of Ontario, Canada, you
+will be told that Oakes was booted off the train there because he was
+dead-beating his way. The country had been prospected, pronounced
+worthless and nobody believed there was pay dirt except a Chinaman.
+
+Harry Oakes had an ear for anybody’s tale of gold and listened to the
+Chinaman. He was 38 years old. Lady Luck had always slammed the door in
+his face but this time, (January, 1912) she flung it open. Eleven years
+later Oakes was rich.
+
+He had always talked on a grand scale even when broke at Shoshone. With
+a taste for luxury he began to gratify it. He bought a palatial home at
+Niagara Falls and served his guests on gold platters. As his fortune
+increased he gave largely to charities and welfare projects such as city
+parks, playgrounds, hospitals. These gifts lead one to believe that the
+belated payment of $300 borrowed from Dad Fairbanks was a calculated
+delay so that Harry Oakes could enjoy the little act he put on at Baker.
+
+During World War I he gave $500,000 to a London hospital, was knighted
+by King George V in 1939. He became a friend of the Duke of Windsor and
+at his Nassau residence was often the host to the Duke and his Duchess,
+the amazing Wallis Warfield, Baltimore girl who went from a boarding
+house to wed a British king.
+
+Sir Harry Oakes was murdered in the palatial Nassau home, July 7, 1943,
+allegedly by a titled son-in-law who was later acquitted—a verdict
+denounced by many.
+
+_In connection with the story of Helen Holmes told above, it should be
+explained that the original title was “Hazards of Helen” and following
+an old Hollywood custom, Pathe produced a new version called “Perils of
+Pauline.” In this the heroine’s part was taken by Pearl White._
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XIX
+                          Death Valley Scotty
+
+
+A strictly factual thumbnail sketch of Walter Scott would contain the
+following incidents:
+
+He ran away from his Kentucky home to join his brother, Warner, as a cow
+hand on the ranch of John Sparks—afterward governor of Nevada. He worked
+as a teamster for Borax Smith at Columbus Marsh. He had a similar job at
+Old Harmony Borax Works.
+
+In the Nineties he went to work with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. He
+married Josephine Millius, a candy clerk on Broadway, New York, and
+brought her to Nevada.
+
+He became guide, friend, companion, and major domo for Albert
+Johnson—Chicago millionaire who had come to the desert for his health.
+He did some prospecting in the early part of the century, but never
+found a mine of value.
+
+America was mining-mad following the Tonopah and Goldfield strikes and
+Scotty went East in search of a grubstake. He obtained one from Julian
+Gerard, Vice President of the Knickerbocker Trust Company and a brother
+of James W. Gerard who had married the daughter of Marcus Daly, Montana
+copper king and who was later U.S. Ambassador to Germany.
+
+Scotty staked a claim near Hidden Spring and named it The Knickerbocker.
+He gave Gerard glowing reports of a mine so rich its location must be
+kept secret.
+
+Scotty appeared in Los Angeles unheard of, in a ten gallon hat and a
+flaming necktie and with the natural showman’s skill, tossed money
+around in lavish tips or into the street for urchins to scramble over.
+
+This was the well-staged prelude to the charter of the famed Scotty
+Special for a record-breaking run from Los Angeles to Chicago. Though
+Scotty stoutly denies it, he was lifted to fame by a big and talented
+sorrel-headed sports editor and reporter on the Los Angeles Examiner,
+named Charles Van Loan, and John J. Byrnes, passenger agent of the Santa
+Fe railroad. Scotty meant nothing to either of these men, but the
+publicity Byrnes saw for the Santa Fe did, and the red necktie, the big
+hat, the scattering of coins, and the secret mine made the sort of story
+Van Loan liked.
+
+Here Scotty’s trail is lost in the fantastic stories of writers, press
+agents, and promoters. Several years afterward when his yarns began to
+backfire, Scotty swore in a Los Angeles court that E. Burt Gaylord, a
+New York man, furnished $10,000 for the Scotty Special’s spectacular
+dash across the continent—the object being to promote the sale of stock
+in the “secret mine.”
+
+More remarkable than any yarn Scotty ever told is the fact that although
+headlines made Scotty, headlines have failed to kill the Scotty legend.
+
+You may toss our heroes into the ash can, but we dust them off and put
+them back. Likable, ingratiating, Scotty will brush aside any attack
+with a funny story and let it go at that.
+
+In a law suit for an accounting against Scotty, Julian Gerard asserted
+he was to have 22½% of any treasure Scotty found. Judge Ben Harrison
+decided in Gerard’s favor, but the only claim found in Scotty’s name was
+the utterly worthless Knickerbocker and Gerard got nothing. The claim
+showed little sign of ever having been worked. A few broken rocks. A few
+holes which could be filled with a shovel within a few moments.
+
+Passing the claim once, I stopped to talk with a native: “This is the
+scene of the Battle of Wingate Pass,” he told me. “In case you never
+heard of it, it was fought for liberty, Scotty’s liberty—that is. Gerard
+got suspicious about Scotty’s mine and decided to send his own engineers
+out to investigate. He ordered Scotty to meet them at Barstow and show
+them something or else. It worried Scotty a little, not long. He’d
+learned about Indian fighting with Buffalo Bill and met the fellows as
+ordered. When he led them to his wagon waiting behind the depot, the
+Easterners took a look at the wagon, another look at Scotty and one at
+each other. The wagon had boiler plate on the sides, rifles stacked army
+fashion alongside. Outriders with six-guns holstered on their belts and
+Winchesters cradled in their arms.
+
+“‘Don’t let it worry you,’ Scotty said. ‘Piutes on the warpath. Old
+Dripping Knife, their Chief claims my gold belongs to them. Dry-gulched
+a couple of my best men last week.’
+
+“The Easterners turned white and Scotty gave ’em another jolt.
+‘Butchered my boys and fed ’em to their pigs. But we are fixed for ’em
+this trip. They sent word they aim to exterminate us. Maybe try it, but
+I’ve got lookouts planted all along. Let’s go....’ He shunted them
+aboard, shaking in their knees and headed out of Barstow.
+
+“The party had reached that hill you see when suddenly out of the brush
+and the gulches and from behind the rocks came a horde of ‘redskins,’
+yelling and shooting. Scotty’s men leaped from their saddles and the
+battle was on. The Easterners jumped out of the wagon and hit the ground
+running for the nearest dry wash and that was the closest they ever got
+to Scotty’s mine. You’ve got to hand it to Scotty.”
+
+The story made front page from coast to coast and it was several days
+before the hoax was revealed. Unexplained though undenied, was the
+statement that Albert Johnson was in Scotty’s party listed as “Doctor
+Jones.” It is assumed that he had no guilty knowledge of the hoax.
+
+The most astounding achievement of Scotty’s career was attained when he
+interested in an imaginary Death Valley mine, Al Myers, a hard-bitten
+prospector and mining man who had made the discovery strike at
+Goldfield; Rol King, of Los Angeles, bon vivant and manager of the
+popular Hollenbeck Hotel, and Sidney Norman who as mining editor of the
+Los Angeles Times knew mines and mining men.
+
+These were certainly not the gullible type. But with a yarn of gold,
+Scotty induced them to hazard a trip into Death Valley in mid-summer
+when the temperature was 124 degrees.
+
+Scotty may have missed the acquisition of a good mine when he failed to
+find one lost by Bob Black. While hunting sheep in the Avawatz Range,
+Bob found some rich float. “Honest,” Bob said, “I knocked off the quartz
+and had pure gold.” He tried to locate the ledge but he couldn’t match
+his specimen. Later he returned with Scotty, but a cloudburst had mauled
+the country. They found the corners of Bob’s tepee, but not the ledge.
+They made several later attempts to find it, but failed.
+
+Bob always declared that some day he would uncover the ledge and might
+have succeeded if he hadn’t met Ash Meadows Jack Longstreet one day when
+both were full of desert likker. Bob passed the lie. Jack drew first.
+Taps for Bob.
+
+
+All kinds of stories have been told to explain Albert Johnson’s
+connection with Scotty. The first and the true one is that Johnson,
+coming to the desert for his health, hired Scotty as a guide, liked his
+yarns and his camping craft and kept him around to yank a laugh out of
+the grim solitude.
+
+But that version didn’t appeal to the old burro men. They could believe
+in the hydrophobic skunks or the Black Bottle kept in the county
+hospital to get rid of the old and useless, but not in a Santa Claus
+like Albert Johnson. “It just don’t make sense—handing that sort of
+money to a potbellied loafer like Scotty....”
+
+Albert Johnson was able to afford any expenditure to make his life in a
+difficult country less lonely. He could have searched the world over and
+found no better investment for that purpose than Scotty.
+
+Genial, resourceful, and never at a loss for a yarn that would fit his
+audience, Scotty was cast in a perfect role. As a matter of fact,
+whatever it cost Johnson for Scotty’s flings in Hollywood, or alimony
+for Scotty’s wife, it probably came back in the dollar admissions that
+tourists paid to pass the portals of the Castle for a look at Scotty. Of
+course they seldom saw Scotty—never in later years. Mrs. Johnson was an
+intensely religious woman and didn’t like liquor and that disqualified
+Scotty.
+
+“This is Scotty’s room,” the attendant would say. “And that’s his bed.”
+
+“Oh, isn’t he here?”
+
+“Not today. Scotty’s a little under the weather. Went over to his shack
+so he wouldn’t be disturbed....”
+
+Mrs. Johnson was killed in an auto driven by her husband in Towne’s Pass
+when, to avoid going over a precipice, he headed the machine into the
+wall of a cut.
+
+In 1939 Albert Johnson testified that he first met Scotty in Johnson’s
+Chicago office when a wealthy friend appeared with Scotty, who was
+looking for a grubstake. Johnson said he gave Scotty “something between
+$1000 and $5000.” When the attorney asked him to be more definite,
+Johnson replied that at the time, his income was between one-half
+million and two million dollars a year and the exact amount consequently
+was of no importance then. “Since then,” Johnson testified, “I have
+given him $117,000 in cash and about the same in grubstakes, mules,
+food, and equipment.”
+
+They went together into the mountains as Johnson explained, “because I
+was all hepped up with his ... claims.” Further explaining his
+connection with Scotty, he said: “I was crippled in a railroad accident.
+My back was broken. I was paralyzed from the hips down. Through the
+years I got to have a great fondness for him.”
+
+Albert Johnson, whose fortune came from the National Insurance Company,
+died in 1948, leaving a will that contained no mention of Scotty.
+
+But one laurel none can deny Walter Scott. He did more to put Death
+Valley on the must list of the American tourists than all the histories
+and all the millions spent for books, pamphlets, and radio broadcasts.
+
+
+The almost incredible case of Jack and Myra Benson proves that P. T.
+Barnum was not wholly wrong in his dictum regarding the birthrate of
+suckers.
+
+Newly married in Montana they loaded their car and set out to seek
+fortune in the West. “We didn’t know anything about gold,” Jack
+confided. “If anyone had told us to throw a forked stick up a hillside
+and dig where it fell, we would have done it.”
+
+Near Parker, Arizona, they were having supper in camp when another
+traveler stopped and asked permission to erect his tent nearby. Myra
+invited him to share their supper and during the meal the stranger told
+them he was a chemist and that he had prospected over most of the West.
+He had found a clay that cured meningitis, he said, and this had led to
+fortune. In one town he had found the entire population, including
+doctors and nurses down and out. The clay had cured them within a week.
+Among the cured, was the son of a rich woman who had given him $5000.
+
+Grateful for the fate that had brought this man into their lives, the
+Bensons confided that they had hoped to reach the California gold
+fields, but car trouble had depleted their cash and asked if he knew of
+any place where they could pan gold.
+
+“Go to Silver Lake, in San Bernardino County, California,” he advised
+them, “and your troubles will be over. On the edges of the lake is a
+thick mud. Get some tanks and boil it. You’ll have a residue of gold.”
+
+Jack and Myra set out over the Colorado Desert; then climbed the
+Providence Mountains to worry through the deep blow sand of the Devil’s
+Playground. After three gruelling weeks they reached the lake. There
+they boiled the mud. Then an old prospector became curious about their
+unusual performance. The world slipped out from under the Bensons when
+he told them they were the victims of a liar.
+
+With $5.00 they headed for Death Valley; found themselves broke and
+gasless at Cave Spring. Jack knocked upon the door of a shack he saw
+there. The woman who opened the door was Jack’s former school teacher,
+Mrs. Ira Sweatman, who was keeping house for her cousin, Adrian
+Egbert—there for his health.
+
+Those who traveled the Death Valley road by way of Yermo and Cave Spring
+will remember that every five miles tacked to stake or bush were signs
+that read: “Water and oil.” This was Adrian Egbert’s fine and practical
+way of aiding the fellow in trouble.
+
+Myra and Jack later acquired a claim near Rhodes Spring, a short
+distance from Salsbury Pass road into Death Valley and moved there to
+develop it. I had been away from Shoshone with no contacts and returning
+was surprised to find Myra there. I inquired about Jack.
+
+“Why, haven’t you heard?” she asked, and from the expression in her eyes
+I knew that Jack was dead.
+
+As best I could, I expressed my condolence, knowing how deeply she had
+loved.
+
+She said: “He went up to the tunnel to set off three blasts. I heard
+only two. He was to come after the third blast. I knew something was
+wrong and went up. Bigod, Mr. Caruthers, Jack’s head was blown off to
+hellangone....”
+
+Myra’s language failed to mask the grief her welling eyes disclosed.
+
+Only once in her long, helpful life did Myra ever stoop to deception.
+The old age pension law was passed and Myra was entitled to and needed
+its benefits, but Myra wouldn’t sign the application. She made one
+excuse after another, but finally Stella Brown got at the bottom of her
+refusal. Myra had been married to Jack for 40 years and just didn’t want
+him to find out that she was a year older than he. Mrs. Brown at last
+persuaded her to put aside her vanity.
+
+“Hell—” Jack grinned when told about it. “I knew her age when I married
+her.”
+
+On cold winter nights Myra could always be found in the Snake House
+where a chair beside the stove was reserved for her. One night I said
+jestingly: “You never play poker. What are you doing here?”
+
+She whispered: “Wood’s hard to get. I’m saving mine.”
+
+Then came one of those mornings when one’s soul tingles with the feel of
+a perfect desert day and Myra was up early. She came to the store.
+
+“What got you up at this hour?” Bernice asked.
+
+“I felt too dam’ good to stay indoors....”
+
+There were a few old timers in the store and these surrounded
+her—because she was the kind who could tell you that it was hotter than
+hell, in a thrilling way. She bought a few groceries and started back to
+her cabin. Friendly eyes followed her passage along a path across the
+playground of the little school. Children sliding down the chute or
+riding teeter boards, waved affectionately. Myra was seen to falter in
+her step, then sag to the sand. The children ran to her aid and in a
+moment Shoshone was gathering about her. Myra Benson was dead.
+
+Sam Flake, nearing 80, on the fringe of the crowd paid his simple
+tribute in a voice a bit shaky, but in language hard as the rock in the
+hills: “Dam’ her old hide—us boys are going to miss Myra....” He turned
+aside, his hand pulling at the bandana in his hip pocket and Shoshone
+understood.
+
+Though she was buried 500 miles away, every man, woman, and child in
+Shoshone wanted a token of love to attend her and about the grave that
+received her casket was a wilderness of flowers.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter XX
+                     Odd But Interesting Characters
+
+
+In these pages the reader has seen familiar names—the favored of Lady
+Luck—but what of those who failed—the patient, plodding kind of whom you
+hear only on the scene? They too followed jackasses into hidden hills;
+made trails that led others to fortunes which built cities, industries,
+railroad; endowed colleges and made science function for a better world.
+To these humbler actors we owe more than we can repay.
+
+For nearly half a century John (Cranky) Casey roamed the deserts of
+California and Nevada looking for gold. His luck was consistently bad.
+Grim, tall, erect, with a deep slow voice, he was noted for picturesque
+speech which gained emphasis from an utterly humorless face.
+Congenitally he was an autocrat—his speech biting.
+
+A prospector whom Casey didn’t like died and friends were discussing the
+disposition of the remains. “Chop his feet off,” suggested Casey, “and
+drive him into the ground with a doublejack....”
+
+From others one could always hear tales of fortunes made or missed; of
+veins of gold wide as a barn door. But no trick of memory ever turned
+Casey’s bull quartz into picture rock. “Never found enough gold to fill
+a tooth,” he would say.
+
+Casey’s leisure hours were spent over books and magazines, chiefly
+highbrow—particularly books and journals of science.
+
+A tenderfoot was brought in unconscious from Pahrump Valley. A city
+doctor happened to be passing through and after an examination of the
+victim, turned to the men in overalls and hobnail shoes, who’d brought
+him in: “He’s suffering from a derangement of the hypothalamus.”
+
+“Why in the hell don’t you say he had a heat stroke?” Casey barked.
+
+A notorious promoter had a city victim ready for the dotted line.
+“Double your money in no time.... Samples show $200 to the ton....”
+Assuming all prospectors were crooked he called to Casey sitting nearby:
+“Casey, you know the Indian Tom claim?” “Yes, I know it,” Casey
+thundered. “Not a fleck of gold in the whole dam’ hill.”
+
+In the thick silence that followed, the beaten rascal flushed, looked
+belligerently at Casey but Casey’s big, hard fists he knew, could almost
+dent boiler plate and the long arms wrapped about a barrel, could crush
+it flat.
+
+In time Casey acquired an ancient flivver. Only his genius as a mechanic
+kept it going. There were lean years when it bore no license and he kept
+to little-traveled roads. The car, like Casey, was cranky and
+phlegmatic. One day as he was coming into Shoshone it balked in the
+middle of the road, coughed, shivered, and died. Inside the store it was
+120 degrees. Out on the road where Casey stopped it was probably 130.
+For two hours he patiently but vainly tried to coax it back to life.
+Finally he stood aside, wiped the grease from his gnarled hands, calmly
+stoked his pipe and shoved the car from the road. Then he gathered an
+armful of boulders and with a blasting of cussing that shook Shoshone he
+let go with a cannonade of stones that completed its ruin.
+
+At the age of ten Casey had been taken from the drift of a city’s
+backwash and put in an orphanage. Nothing was known of his parentage or
+of relatives. He came to the desert after a colorful career as a
+conductor on the Santa Fe. The late E. W. Harriman, having gained
+control of the Southern Pacific system had his private car attached to a
+Santa Fe train for an inspection tour. At a siding on the Mojave Desert,
+Harriman wanted the train held a few moments. His messenger went to
+Casey, explaining that Harriman was the new boss of the Southern
+Pacific.
+
+“This is the Santa Fe,” Casey bristled, looking at his watch. “I’m due
+in Barstow at 11:05 and bigod I’ll be there.”
+
+Aboard his train he was a despot and a stickler for the rules, demanding
+that even his superiors obey them. This finally was his downfall and he
+came to the desert.
+
+Elinor Glyn, who made the best seller list with “Three Weeks” in the
+early part of the century, came to Rawhide and Tex Rickard, spectacular
+gambler undertook to show her a bit of life a la Rawhide. He took her to
+the Stingaree district and later to a reception in his own place. The
+state’s notables were presented to the lady along with Nat Goodwin,
+Julian Hawthorne, and others internationally known.
+
+Tex saw Casey standing alone at the end of the bar and knowing he was a
+voracious reader he went to Casey: “Come on and meet the author of Three
+Weeks....”
+
+“I’ve read it,” Casey said. “They’ve hung folks for less.”
+
+Casey’s method of getting a job when his grub ran out was unique and
+unfailing. He would storm into the store and turn loose on Charlie, in
+charge of the roads and long his friend. “Who’s keeping up these roads?
+Chuck holes in ’em big as the Grand Canyon ... disgrace—”
+
+“Been waiting for you to come in,” Charlie would say with a sober face.
+“Get a shovel and fix ’em.”
+
+A good conscientious worker, Casey would put the road in shape, pay his
+debts and again head into the horizon.
+
+You who spin through Death Valley or along its approaches owe much to
+Casey, who made many of the original road beds the hard way—with pick
+and shovel.
+
+At last Casey got the old age pension and his latter years were the
+best. His home, a dugout in the bank of a wash near Tecopa. With no
+rent, with books and magazines and the solitude he loved, he lived
+happily. “When I croak,” he often said, “just put me in my dugout. Toss
+a stick of dynamite in after me. Shut the door and cave in the goddam’
+hill.”
+
+One night he went to Tecopa. Friends were doing a spot of drinking and
+far behind in his score with the years, Casey joined them. There was
+nothing out of line. Just yarns and memories and Casey had a lot of
+these. Tonopah. Goldfield. Rawhide. Ely. Foundling days.
+
+“... They put me in a religious school. Had no relatives. In those days
+they whaled hell outa you just to see you squirm. ‘Casey,’ the teacher
+would ask, ‘who swallowed the whale?’ How did I know? Then he’d drag me
+off by the ear and blister my bottom. I shoved off one night. Been on
+the loose ever since.”
+
+As he drank from his bottle of beer he suddenly slumped—and died
+instantly. Because of the intense heat, Maury Sorrells, now Supervisor
+but then Coroner, ordered immediate burial.
+
+Someone recalled Casey’s wish to be put in the dugout and the hill blown
+up and started for the dynamite. But Whitey Bill McGarn warned that it
+would violate the law. One-eyed Casey—no relation, but long a friend,
+suggested a wake until the grave was dug. “It will be daylight then and
+we’ll plant him in the wash right in front of his dugout.”
+
+This was done as the sun came over the hills and I like to think that
+somewhere in the after life, all is well with Casey.
+
+
+Ben Brandt, previously mentioned, was a big blond man with child-like
+blue eyes, huge gnarled hands and the strength of an ox. He wore
+enormous boots, but when he bought new ones he always complained that
+they lacked traction and would go immediately to the dump, salvage an
+old tire casing and add two inches of reinforcement to the soles, with
+half a pound of hobnails. Ben then was ready for travel—provided he
+could find his burros.
+
+Near remote Quail Springs Ben dug a 4×4 mine shaft 75 feet deep, without
+aid. Descending by ladder he would fill a 10 gallon bucket with dirt,
+climb out and bring it to the surface. Day after day, month after month
+Ben applied the power of two strong arms and two strong legs. “With an
+engine you could do it in half the time,” Ben was told. “I’ve got plenty
+of time,” Ben drawled.
+
+Ben disdained gold in quartz formation. “I like placer. It’s a poor
+man’s game. If you find gold you put it in your poke and you’ve got
+spending money.”
+
+Ben kept five burros and being industrious, never lacked a grubstake. He
+avoided argument except upon one subject, and that was burros versus
+Fords in prospecting. “I can get anywhere with my burros. I find stalled
+flivvers all over the desert and my burros drag ’em in.”
+
+Ben believed that a burro had at least some of the intellectual powers
+of man. “Read a clock good as you,” he said. “I worked my burro,
+Solomon, on a hoist. He didn’t like it. I got up every morning at
+daylight, by an alarm clock. Slept out and kept the clock on a boulder
+at my head and got up when the alarm went off. One morning I woke up
+with the sun shining straight down in my eyes. It was noon. That burro
+had sneaked up and taken that clock down the canyon a mile away. Don’t
+tell me they can’t think! I sold him. Too smart.”
+
+I asked Ben once what he would do if he suddenly found a million dollar
+claim. “I would build a monument a thousand feet high on top of
+Telescope Peak and dedicate it to burros.”
+
+Such a monument would inadequately express the debt today’s world owes
+that little beast. Here are some of the things that link your life to
+the burro:
+
+The springs and the mattress in the bed you were born on. The talc that
+powdered you. The soap that bathed you. The ring you slipped on the
+finger of the girl you love. The paint on your house. The glass in your
+windows. The tile in your bathroom. The enamel ware in your kitchen. The
+prescription your druggist fills. The fillings the dentist puts into
+your teeth. The coin and the currency you spend. The auto you ride in
+and finally the casket in which you leave this world.
+
+Wars have been won or lost and the credit of nations stabilized because
+a burro carried a prospector’s grub into faraway hills.
+
+Ben’s burros strayed and he’d just returned with them after a two days’
+hunt. He was sitting on the bench mopping his brow when Louise Grantham,
+the girl with the mine in the Panamint, came up. She needed pack animals
+to get the ore down to the road. She’d tried before, to trade her Ford
+pickup for Ben’s burros, but he’d never shown a flicker of interest. In
+a voice pitched for Ben’s ears, she said to Ernie Huhn: “If Ben didn’t
+waste so much time hunting those jacks, he might find a mine.”
+
+Ben cocked an ear, but made no comment.
+
+“Now take that Quail Springs hole,” Louise went on. “If he had my pickup
+he could take off a wheel, put on a belt and haul up the muck in one
+tenth the time, and instead of hoofing it in the sun he could ride in a
+cool cab and haul his supplies in.”
+
+There comes a weak moment in everyone’s life and this was Ben’s. He
+traded the burros for the Ford and one of the best prospectors on the
+desert was ruined forever.
+
+Ben had a mortal fear of women and nothing could convince him that any
+unattached woman wasn’t always lying in wait for any loose man.
+
+Ben went into the Johnnie country to prospect and passing through I
+looked him up. He was living in a tin shack in the canyon leading to the
+old Johnnie Mine. I asked Ben about his luck.
+
+“Last prospecting I did was right out there.” He pointed to the slope in
+front of his house. “Good placer ground too.”
+
+“Why did you quit?”
+
+“Woman,” Ben grumbled. “Don’t know yet what come over me, but I took a
+woman for a partner.” He pointed to a boulder a few hundred yards away.
+“There’s where I wanted to start digging. It’s rich dirt. She wanted to
+start up there near her shack.”
+
+“Well, what difference did it make?” I asked.
+
+“I see you don’t know women. I hadn’t been working up there by her house
+no time before she called me to get her a bucket of water. Bucket was
+half full. Next day she wanted a board in the kitchen floor nailed down.
+Didn’t need any nail. ‘There’s some fresh apple pie on the table,’ she
+says. I told her I didn’t like pie. I’m crazy about pie but I knew her
+game. She calculated if I ate with her two—three times I’d be a dead
+pigeon. So I told her she could have the claim and walked off.”
+
+Ben struck a happier note when he informed me that he didn’t need to
+work any more and at last had attained the one ambition of his life.
+“Come inside and I’ll show you.” Beaming as only a man can when he sits
+on top of the world, he approached a table and it flashed over me that I
+would see a certified check for a fortune.
+
+There was a cloth over the table and he carefully wiped his big hands
+before touching it. He wet his big, broad thumb and forefinger and gave
+them an extra wipe on the sides of his shirt, a wide smile on his face
+and I had a vicarious thrill that a man who could barely read and write
+had at last achieved that which he most wanted in life. He started to
+remove the cloth, but paused. “Always said if I ever struck it rich,
+first money I spent would be for one of these dinkuses.”
+
+He flipped the cloth aside. I stared incredulous. It was a portable
+typewriter.
+
+He replaced the cover with the gentle care of a mother putting her baby
+to bed and I left him, sure that God was in his heaven with an eye on
+Ben.
+
+
+Contemporary with Ben was Joe Volmer, who lived in a dugout in Dublin
+Gulch. I had seen royalty from afar and once I had dined with a sultan
+on horsemeat and fried bananas, but no king ever attained the majesty of
+Joe. He was tall, erect, wore a white sailor’s hat and carried a cane.
+His mustache was always waxed to a needle point, after the manner of
+Kaiser Wilhelm. Though he increased his small pension by selling home
+brew, he always managed to give the impression that he was descending to
+your level when he accepted the two bits you left on his table.
+
+He was neat as he was lordly and forever scrubbing his pots and pans. He
+kept the dugout immaculate and when I first saw him standing on the
+ledge in front of his door, calmly surveying the valley below, he posed
+like an Alexander the Great, with the world conquered and trussed at his
+feet.
+
+I had never seen him until one day a tourist came into the store and
+asked Charlie for a stop-watch. Charlie told him he didn’t carry
+stop-watches. Shortly after the tourist had gone, Joe came in for a
+stop-watch. “Don’t keep ’em,” Charlie said. “Helluva store,” Joe barked
+and strode out.
+
+“A curious coincidence,” I said. “Two calls for a stop-watch in the same
+day away out here.”
+
+“It’s no coincidence,” Charlie said. “Just Joe Volmer. He’s in every day
+asking for something he knows I haven’t got.”
+
+After Joe left, Jack Crowley came for his mail. Brown was in the cage
+set apart for the post office. He had just received several sheets of
+six-cent stamps—twice as many as he needed. “Jack,” he said, “when you
+see Joe tell him I’m out of six-cent stamps.” Within an hour Joe shoved
+a five dollar bill through the window. “Give me five dollars’ worth of
+six-cent stamps,” he ordered. Brown picked up the bill, filled the order
+and never again did Joe ask for merchandise not in stock.
+
+Joe sold a claim and decided he needed a refrigerator to keep the beer
+cold. So he picked up a Monkey Ward catalogue and ordered a big white
+enamel number large enough for a hotel. Joe thought a refrigerator was
+just a refrigerator and he strutted around telling everybody. He had to
+widen the dugout door and waiting customers were more than eager to help
+him get the machine in place. He loaded the shelves and told them to
+come back in a couple of hours and cool their innards.
+
+They came with their tongues hanging out. Joe set out the glasses and
+passed the bottles. Herman Jones picked one up and shook it. The cork
+hit the ceiling. “Hotter’n hell,” Herman said. “What sort of cooler is
+that?” He went over and looked. “Gas. You dam’ fool. Nearest gas is
+Barstow.”
+
+Until Joe’s death he used the refrigerator to store pots and pans.
+
+Discovered in his dugout in a serious condition, Joe was rushed to Death
+Valley Junction 28 miles away, where the Pacific Coast Borax Company
+maintained a hospital which was in charge of Dr. Shrum, who was rather
+realistic and somewhat cold blooded.
+
+Just as they had gotten Joe in the doctor’s office, another patient was
+brought in. Dr. Shrum looked at the new comer and then at Joe. “Take Joe
+out,” he ordered. “He’s going to die anyway.”
+
+Joe was wheeled outside and a moment later was dead.
+
+
+George Williams, a Spanish American war veteran, retired to Shoshone on
+a pension of $50. Since food was cheap, George had more money than he
+knew what to do with. He kept five burros. He never prospected, but
+roamed the country and thought nothing of taking a 300 mile trip across
+the roughest terrain in the region. After spending his summers in the
+high country, he would return to Shoshone in winter. There he had a five
+acre ranch fenced in and a neat cabin.
+
+Every day George would come to the store and buy a pound of chocolates.
+“I’ve got a sweet tooth,” he would explain.
+
+Charlie, sure that no one could eat as much chocolate as George bought,
+was a bit curious as to what George did with it and trailed him one day
+through the mesquite to find George feeding the candy to his burros.
+
+George was not a drinker, but on one occasion he joined a party and went
+on a bender. He awoke next morning with a horrible hangover and was so
+humiliated that he left Shoshone and never returned. He went over to
+Sandy and died in the ’30s.
+
+One day George started to tell me a story as we sat on the bench. His
+burros were grazing in the nearby salt grass. Every time he reached the
+climax of his yarn, he would jump up to go after a straying burro. When
+he retrieved that one, another would wander off and George would leave
+me again.
+
+For one entire summer I listened to the beginning of that yarn and every
+morning would remind him of it.
+
+“Where was I?” he’d say. “Oh, yes, I was telling you about the girl
+climbing out of the fellow’s window just before daylight. Well, she
+went—”
+
+Then George would jump up and start for a burro, and I never learned
+what happened to the torrid romance after the girl crawled out of her
+lover’s window.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XXI
+                        Roads. Cracker Box Signs
+
+
+Any resemblance that a Death Valley highway bore to a road was a
+coincidence prior to 1926, and few tourists traveled over them unless
+two cars were along. “Just follow the wheel tracks and keep your eyes
+peeled for the cracker box signs along the road,” was the usual advice
+to the novice who didn’t know that tracks left by Mormons’ wagons nearly
+a century before may be seen today.
+
+One of these led me to the bank of a mile-wide gash made by cloudbursts.
+To locate the missing link I climbed the nearest mountain and on a
+lonely mesa came at last upon a piece of shook nailed to a stake and
+stuck into the ground. But it had nothing to do with roads. A crude
+inscription read:
+
+
+    Montana Jim
+    July 1888
+    A dam good pal
+
+
+Reverently I stepped aside. Never again would I see a finer tribute to
+man. A few rocks bleached white in the sun outlined a sunken grave.
+Crossed upon it were Jim’s pick and shovel. It was not difficult to
+recreate what had happened there. Jim and his friend looking for gold.
+Jim’s faltering and the sun beating him down. Jim’s partner knowing that
+Jim’s moniker would identify him better than a surname to anyone who
+passed that way interested in Jim. Out in the desert 100 miles from
+human habitation he couldn’t call an undertaker, so he dug a hole,
+wrapped Jim in his canvas, rolled him in and hoped that God would reach
+down for Jim.
+
+At that period it was not an uncommon experience for the early tourist
+to lose his way by doing the natural thing at a crossroads and take the
+one which showed the sign of most travel. Often he would find later that
+he had followed a trail to a mine miles away. Often too, it led to
+disaster.
+
+
+The story of roads begins at Shoshone with Brown. In his trips in and
+around the valley, he erected signs to prevent the traveler from losing
+his way and his life. “I would like to see Death Valley country,” people
+would say to him, “but everyone tells me to stay out.”
+
+Inyo county had little revenue and that was used in the more populous
+Owens Valley 150 miles west. The east side (the Shoshone area) was
+totally neglected. Letters and petitions protesting the unfair
+distribution of county funds were tossed into the waste basket. “Roads
+in that cauldron? Who would use ’em? Nobody ever goes there but a few
+old prospectors.”
+
+This was true but it was also true that on Owens Valley’s west side the
+lakes and forests of the High Sierras were attracting a paying crop of
+vacationists and the supervisors knew it would be political suicide to
+divert this traffic from its towns and resorts. The county-wide opinion
+as to chance for relief was expressed in the slang of the day by a
+loafer on the bench at Shoshone: “About as much as a wax mouse would
+have against an asbestos cat in a race through hell. They have the votes
+and elect the supervisors.”
+
+The east side had never had a member on the board. In the Shoshone
+precinct were less than 40 voters. In Death Valley a few prospectors who
+would have battered down the gates of hell if they thought gold lay
+beyond, poked around in its canyons. A few Indians. A few workmen for
+the Borax Company. In 1924 Brown put his suitcase in his car, filled the
+tank and said to those about: “Fellows, I’m running for Supervisor.”
+“You’ll be the mouse,” quipped a friend.
+
+“I’ll let ’em know somebody lives over here anyway....”
+
+Skirting the urban strongholds of the gentlemen in office Brown knocked
+at every door in the district. He berated none nor claimed he had all
+the answers to an obviously difficult problem. “... Roads built there
+will lead here. Everybody will gain....” Then to the next cabin and the
+next canyon until he’d seen every voter.
+
+Before the opposition knew he had been around, he was back in Shoshone
+selling bacon and beans.
+
+When the votes were counted the overlords of the west side gasped. “Who
+the hell’s this Brown? Didn’t even know he was running....”
+
+Taking office January 1, 1925, he found that the beaten incumbent had
+spent all the money allocated for road maintenance in his own bailiwick
+before retiring. Nevertheless, Brown convinced the new board his
+election proved that the people of the entire county agreed with him
+that the Death Valley area could no longer be neglected and managed to
+get a niggardly appropriation which would not have built a mile of
+decent mountain road, and his district had three challenging mountain
+ranges to cross.
+
+With this appropriation he was expected to care for a mileage four times
+greater than that of the west side and was thus responsible for not only
+eastern approaches but maintenance of 150 miles of road from Darwin, all
+roads in the valley and those which furnished the north and south
+approaches. He managed to get $5000 after two years. With this he
+procured road machinery on a rental basis and succeeded in making a fair
+desert road. Then he began a one-man crusade to exploit Death Valley as
+a tourist attraction. “We need only roads a tourist can travel.”
+
+He worked just as diligently for all of Inyo’s roads. “We have one of
+the world’s best vacation lands,” he told the west-siders. “You have an
+abundance of beautiful lakes and streams in a setting of mountains
+impressive as any in the world. On our side we offer the appeal of the
+Panamint, the Funeral Range, and spectacular Death Valley. Tourists will
+come to both of us if we give them a chance and they will be our best
+crop.”
+
+By 1926 his crusade for roads had spread beyond Inyo county lines. San
+Bernardino county, through which passes Highway 66, a main
+transcontinental artery, joins Inyo on the south. Its board of
+supervisors was in session one day when Brown strode in. Most of them he
+knew. He wanted their advice, he told them. “Your county and mine need
+more roads to bring more people. The easiest way into Death Valley is
+through your county from Baker. The distance from Baker to the Inyo
+county line is 45 miles. If you will build the road to the Inyo line, I
+will build it from that point to Furnace Creek, 71 miles. Such a road
+would open Death Valley to the public and the tourists who will travel
+will spend enough money in your towns to pay your share of the cost.”
+
+San Bernardino supervisors agreed to consider it but were not
+enthusiastic. One of America’s largest counties, San Bernardino had also
+one of its largest road problems.
+
+Brown kept plugging, arranging meetings, convincing residents that the
+county’s portion of the road would be over flat country and over roads
+already passable, and its construction inexpensive.
+
+Finally San Bernardino county supervisors agreed and by April, 1929, he
+had 71 miles of passable road. The result was that Death Valley was no
+longer remote as the Congo and tourists began to come.
+
+To Shoshone it meant a few more windshields to wipe; a few more cars to
+crawl under. Another soft answer to frame for the sightseer cursing the
+desolation. Another shed for the store that started on the kitchen
+table.
+
+In 1932 Brown went before the State Highway Commission and urged that
+all the roads he had built in Death Valley be taken over by the state.
+The law was passed.
+
+Death Valley became a National Monument February 11, 1933, by order of
+President Franklin Roosevelt. At that time America was groping its way
+through depression, worrying about its dinner and its debts as a result
+of the stock market crash of 1929.
+
+In the nation’s hobo jungles the seasoned “bindle stiff” made room for
+the newcomer who had always lived on the right side of the tracks.
+Freight trains carried a new kind of bum when the adolescent female
+crawled into a car alongside an adolescent male, vainly seeking work
+anywhere at anything.
+
+To save them and others like them C.C.C. camps were organized and one of
+these recruited largely from New York City’s Bowery, was sent to Death
+Valley with headquarters at Cow Creek, a few miles north of Furnace
+Creek Inn.
+
+The new park was under the supervision of Col. John R. White, later
+superintendent of the entire National Park System and to Ray Goodwin,
+assistant superintendent was assigned the task of building additional
+roads and trails to points of interest to connect with the State System
+which Brown had built.
+
+Then began in earnest the flow of tourist traffic to the “God-forsaken
+hole” for which Brown had worked for 14 long and difficult years. But he
+soon found that to the problems of a small desert community he had added
+those of a whole county. They were the aftermath of what has since been
+called in a marvelous understatement by Morrow Mayo, historian of Los
+Angeles, “The Rape of Owens Valley.”
+
+In the early part of the century, the city of Los Angeles had secretly
+acquired nearly all sources of water in Inyo and Mono counties. An
+amazed world applauded the engineering feat by which water was siphoned
+over mountain ranges to flow through ditches and tunnels, a distance of
+259 miles.
+
+The enterprise was announced by its promoters as the answer to the
+desperate need for water. It is now known that this need was only a mask
+to hide a scheme to make Los Angeles pay the cost of bringing water to
+108,000 acres of waterless land in San Fernando valley so that the
+owners could make a profit of a hundred million dollars through its
+subdivision and sale. This they did.
+
+The shameful story glorifies by comparison the cattle wars of the early
+West when one side hired its Billy the Kids to kill off the other—the
+only difference being that in the Owens Valley feud the Billy the Kids
+were the Big Names of Los Angeles who used unscrupulous politicians and
+laws cunningly passed instead of six-guns.
+
+As a consequence, Los Angeles owns the towns, ranches, and cattle ranges
+so that merchants, householders, ranchers, and renters have no title
+except in a relatively few instances, to the land upon which they live
+or to the house or store they occupy. Los Angeles could sell or lease or
+refuse to sell or lease land to cattlemen, homes to residents or stores
+to merchants and sell or refuse to sell water to those who had lived all
+their lives and would die on the devastated land.
+
+As a result, the relations between the city and the Displaced Persons of
+the two counties were those of victor and vanquished.
+
+In 1935 the city succeeded in getting an act passed by the legislature
+which prevented any town from becoming incorporated without the consent
+of 60 per cent of the property owners. The purpose of the act seemed
+fair enough when it was announced that it was designed to save the towns
+from both political demagogues and crackpots running amuck in California
+and it became a law.
+
+But there was more than the eye could see. Its real object had been to
+strengthen the strangle hold of the Los Angeles Water and Power board
+upon Owens Valley. Since it owned the towns it could now prevent their
+incorporation. There had been some feeling of security under a
+resolution of the Water and Power Board which had declared that
+merchants, cattlemen, and residents—all of them lessees, would be given
+preference in new leases and renewals of old ones.
+
+In 1942 the resolution became a scrap of paper, and ranchers, cattle men
+and householders were advised that their leases would hereafter be
+renewed by a method of secret bidding.
+
+Thus the residents of Owens Valley learned that the labor of years had
+brought no security. As one beaten old timer told me, “We’ve been kicked
+around so much I’m used to it. I helped blow those ditches two-three
+times, to turn that water loose on the desert. I know when I’m licked.”
+
+Resentment in Mono county, which provided more of the water taken by Los
+Angeles than Inyo, was even more aroused and smoldering hatreds were
+ready again to blow up a ditch. The two counties constitute the 28th
+Senatorial district.
+
+Brown’s success in the Assembly had not gone unnoticed in the
+neighboring county of Mono. “We need that fellow Brown,” a prominent
+citizen said, and others repeated it.
+
+Again Charlie put his suitcase in his car, filled the tank. “We’ve never
+had anybody from this side at Sacramento,” he told a friend standing by.
+“I’m running for the Senate.”
+
+“Know anybody up there?”
+
+“I’m going and get acquainted,” he said and headed across the valley.
+
+Most of Mono county is isolated by the High Sierras. Again the door to
+door technique. No torches. No brass bands. Just the old
+eye-to-eye-talk-it-over system. As always he let the voter do the
+talking and he listened, but when he slid into his car the voter was
+ready to tell his neighbor: “I like that fellow. Doesn’t claim to know
+it all.” He told his banker, his grocer, his butcher, baker, and barber.
+
+Result? I was in the Senate Chamber at Sacramento later, when I heard
+one of a group of men huddled nearby say, “This is an important bill
+that concerns everybody on the east side of the Sierras. We’d better see
+Charlie.” I nudged the man reading a document at my side. “Those fellows
+want to see you, Senator.”
+
+He had received the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican
+parties and had secured the passage of an act which denies a
+municipality holding more than 50 per cent of the property of another
+subdivision of the state, proprietary power over the security and
+stability of such subdivision. Moreover he was on the all-powerful Rules
+Committee, the Fish and Game, Local Government, Natural Resources,
+Social Welfare, and Election Committees, friend and frequent adviser of
+Governor Warren.
+
+Honeymooning Secretary Ickes was combining business with pleasure when
+he reached California and wanting to see how his Park System was
+functioning, he took his bride to see Death Valley. Besides, he had some
+plans affecting the Inyo area.
+
+The fight was having tough sledding in the legislature despite President
+Roosevelt’s approval. Then he talked to people less biased. “You’d
+better see Charlie....”
+
+“Who the hell’s Charlie?” asked Harold.
+
+“Senator from Death Valley....”
+
+With Ray Goodwin, Superintendent of the Death Valley Monument to guide
+him, he was taken to all the show places. “Now,” said Mr. Ickes, “I want
+to see Brown.”
+
+At Shoshone Charlie’s toggery is strictly for work which includes
+tending the gas pump, stove repairing, plumbing, and what-have-you. He
+was flat on his back under the dripping oil of a balky car when Mr.
+Goodwin stepped from the limousine.
+
+“Charlie,” Mr. Goodwin called, “Mr. Ickes is here to see you.” Receiving
+no answer, he walked over to the car and added that Mr. Ickes was in a
+hurry. Still, no answer. “It’s Secretary Ickes, Department of the
+Interior. This is important.”
+
+“So’s this,” Brown grunted. When he’d finished, he crawled out and
+wiping the grime from his hands, joined Goodwin at the waiting car.
+After being introduced to the bride and the self-styled “Old Curmudgeon”
+the latter explained his plan to add certain lands in Charlie’s
+district, to the Forest Reserve. “... You’re opposing me. You’re a
+Democrat, aren’t you?”
+
+“I came from Georgia,” Charlie drawled.
+
+“You’re for Roosevelt, aren’t you?”
+
+“Within reason,” Charlie answered.
+
+Then Mr. Ickes, with the assurance of the perfectionist began to sell
+his idea.
+
+“Do you know of any reason why the area designated as Forest Reserve
+should not be protected as any other of our natural resources?” he
+concluded.
+
+“Just one,” Charlie said.
+
+“What’s that?” Ickes snapped.
+
+“Your forest is nearly all brush land without a tree on it big enough to
+shade a lizard.”
+
+Charlie was similarly dressed when a well tailored and impatient tourist
+with a carload of friends whom he was evidently trying to impress, drove
+up for gas.
+
+Always unhurried, Charlie came to the pumps, slowly reached for the hose
+and as lazily checked the oil.
+
+“Say, fellow—” the tourist barked. “Senator Brown is a friend of mine.
+Get a move on or you’ll be looking for a job.”
+
+Without the flicker of an eyelid, Charlie quickened, jumped for a
+cleaning rag and briskly polished the windshield. When he brought the
+tourist’s change he apologized for his slowness and begged him not to
+report it to Senator Brown. “Jobs are hard to get and I have a wife and
+ten children to support.”
+
+Touched with remorse, the tourist looked at the change. “Just give it to
+the kids and forget it.”
+
+When the Pacific Coast Borax Company built its swanky Furnace Creek Inn
+on the western slope of the Funeral Range overlooking Death Valley, it
+began to look about for places that would give the most spectacular and
+comprehensive view of the Big Sink as a means of entertaining guests,
+and far enough away to keep them from boredom.
+
+All the old timers who had wandered over the ranges were called in. Each
+suggested the place that had impressed him more than others. Each of
+these places was visited and after weeks of deliberation a spot on
+Chloride Cliff toward the northern end of Death Valley was chosen and
+the bigwigs started back to Los Angeles.
+
+When they stopped at Shoshone for gas and water, Clarence Rasor, an
+engineer of the company was still thinking of the chosen site and asked
+Brown, long his friend, if he knew of any view of the valley better than
+the one at Chloride Cliff.
+
+“I don’t pay much attention to scenery,” he told Rasor. “To me it’s all
+just desert or mountain. But I know one view that made me stop and look.
+Kinda got me. The chances are most folks would rave over it.”
+
+“Could you find it?”
+
+“Sure could....”
+
+Rasor called the others, repeated Charlie’s story and added: “You’re in
+a hurry, but knowing Charlie as I do, I believe we’d better turn around
+and go back if he’ll guide us.”
+
+Charlie agreed. It was a long, tortuous climb, even to the base of the
+peak. There Charlie went ahead and then beckoned them. Holding to bushes
+they walked or crawled to stand beside him; took one look and caught
+their breath. A mile below them lay the awesome Sink. White salt beds
+spread like a shroud over its silent desolation. Billowed dunes, gold
+against the dark of lava rock. Here a pastelled hill. There a brooding
+canyon. Beyond, the colorful Panamint under the golden glow of the sun.
+
+“This is the place,” they said.
+
+“... You can tell ’em too,” said Charlie pointing, “that right down
+there is Copper Canyon. If such stuff interests them, they can see the
+footprints of the camels and elephants and a lot of historic junk like
+that.”
+
+So you who thrill at Dante’s View may thank Charles Brown of Shoshone.
+
+When first elected to the senate, his colleagues were quick to see the
+qualities that had appealed to voters when they elected him supervisor.
+He had frequently been before that body in his fight for roads and tax
+reforms. They knew too that better schools for all rural areas either
+wholly or largely were the result of his efforts, and soon he was on the
+Rules Committee—a place usually assigned to those who come from the more
+populous districts of the state, because its five members through its
+power to appoint all standing and special committees, largely decide
+what legislation reaches the governor.
+
+In 1950 Brown announced his candidacy for reelection under the state law
+that enables a candidate to seek the nomination of two parties.
+
+The slot machine had been outlawed in California by the previous
+legislature and Brown had been largely instrumental in securing the
+passage of the law. Since the slot machine is a three billion dollar
+business in the nation, the gamblers opposed him as part of a general
+plan to secure repeal of the law and reinstate the one-arm bandits.
+
+Since Mono county adjoins Nevada, gambling interests of that state
+contributed without stint, to retire Brown to private life. He had been
+in office for 25 years and opposed by this powerful group, guided by
+both brains and cunning, the odds apparently were against him. While the
+opposition boasted that he was through, Brown was calling at cabins in
+the hills and gulches, meeting friends on busy village streets and again
+when the vote was counted, it was discovered that voters have memories.
+He had won the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican parties
+by almost two to one and under the law, was re-elected.
+
+Due to his priority standing and the retirement of older senators, the
+big fellow who walked 150 miles to get a job at Greenwater in order to
+save the fare to eat on, automatically shares with two men the power to
+control the legislation of the state.
+
+
+Hell, like gold, is where you find it—either in people or places. A lady
+of wealth and aristocratic background in route to Furnace Creek’s luxury
+inn, stopped at Shoshone for gas. Worn out by the long drive over the
+corduroy road, she looked about her and then at Charlie in greasy
+overalls. “How on earth,” she asked in genuine distress, “do you make a
+living in this God-forsaken-hole?”
+
+“It’s hard ma’am,” Charlie said gloomily. “But we get a few pennies from
+tourists, a little flour from mesquite beans, and stay alive one way or
+another, hoping to get out.”
+
+The gracious lady opened her purse, thrust a five dollar bill into
+Charlie’s hand and went her way.
+
+“It really made her happy,” Charlie chuckled, “and I just didn’t have
+the heart to give it back.”
+
+What is it that man wants of these “God-forsaken-holes” on the desert? I
+sought the answer one day when Shoshone was having a holiday. George
+Ishmael, as native as an Indian, was chosen to barbecue the steer. A
+well-to-do tourist begged the job of digging the big pit. “Want to flex
+my muscles....” Another cut the wood. At a depth of four feet, water was
+struck and rose a foot over the bottom. “That’s all right” George said.
+He tossed a dozen railroad ties into the hole, floated them into
+position, covered them with dirt, built the fire, lowered the carcass of
+the steer, covered it with green leaves and filled the hole. “An
+unforgettable feast,” agreed the scores who had come from places 100
+miles away.
+
+Sitting beside me was a prominent Los Angeles attorney, eminent in the
+councils of the Democratic party in both state and nation. “Why,” he
+asked, “will a man wear himself out in the city when he can really live
+in a little place like this?”
+
+“I thought of suicide at first,” said Patsy, young matron with three
+healthy little stairsteps. “My husband said ‘for heaven’s sake, go out
+for a month and have a good time.’ I went. Back in a week.”
+
+A Vermont girl said she had come to escape a straightlaced code that
+constantly reminded her sin was everywhere. “Here I’ve got an even break
+with the devil....”
+
+All had found something that clicked with something inside of them which
+challenged something in civilization. Maybe it was expressed in the
+dogma of the Tennessee judge reared in the hill country of the
+Cumberland river. As he stepped from his plane on his annual vacation he
+was cornered by a reporter: “Judge, you’re 94 years old. What do you
+think of this modern world?”
+
+“Best one I know about.”
+
+“No criticism?”
+
+“None whatever. Maybe a few minor changes. Just now we are being
+educated out of common sense into ignorance; lawed out of patriotism;
+taxed into poverty; doctored to death and preached to hell....”
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XXII
+                  Lost Mines. The Breyfogle and Others
+
+
+The most famous lost mine in the Death Valley area is the Lost
+Breyfogle. There are many versions of the legend, but all agree that
+somewhere in the bowels of those rugged mountains is a colossal mass of
+gold, which Jacob Breyfogle found and lost.
+
+Jacob Breyfogle was a prospector who roamed the country around Pioche
+and Austin, Nevada, with infrequent excursions into the Death valley
+area. He traveled alone.
+
+Indian George, Hungry Bill, and Panamint Tom saw Breyfogle several times
+in the country around Stovepipe Wells, but they could never trace him to
+his claim. When followed, George said, Breyfogle would step off the
+trail and completely disappear. Once George told me about trailing him
+into the Funeral Range. He pointed to the bare mountain. “Him there, me
+see. Pretty quick—” He paused, puckered his lips. “Whoop—no see.”
+
+Breyfogle left a crude map of his course. All lost mines must have a
+map. Conspicuous on this map are the Death Valley Buttes which are
+landmarks. Because he was seen so much here, it was assumed that his
+operations were in the low foothills. I have seen a rough copy of this
+map made from the original in possession of “Wildrose” Frank Kennedy’s
+squaw, Lizzie.
+
+Breyfogle presumably coming from his mine, was accosted near Stovepipe
+Wells by Panamint Tom, Hungry Bill, and a young buck related to them,
+known as Johnny. Hungry Bill, from habit, begged for food. Breyfogle
+refused, explaining that he had but a morsel and several hard days’
+journey before him. On his burro he had a small sack of ore. When
+Breyfogle left, Hungry Bill said, “Him no good.”
+
+Incited by Hungry Bill and possible loot, the Indians followed Breyfogle
+for three or four days across the range. Hungry Bill stopped en route,
+sent the younger Indians ahead. At Stump Springs east of Shoshone,
+Breyfogle was eating his dinner when the Indians sneaked out of the
+brush and scalped him, took what they wished of his possessions and left
+him for dead.
+
+Ash Meadows Charlie, a chief of the Indians in that area confided to
+Herman Jones that he had witnessed this assault. This happened on the
+Yundt Ranch, or as it is better known, the Manse Ranch. Yundt and Aaron
+Winters accidentally came upon Breyfogle unconscious on the ground. The
+scalp wound was fly-blown. They had a mule team and light wagon and
+hurried to San Bernardino with the wounded man. The ore, a chocolate
+quartz, was thrown into the wagon.
+
+“I saw some of it at Phi Lee’s home, the Resting Spring Ranch,” Shorty
+Harris said. “It was the richest ore I ever saw. Fifty pounds yielded
+nearly $6000.”
+
+Breyfogle recovered, but thereafter was regarded as slightly “off.” He
+returned to Austin, Nevada, and the story followed.
+
+Wildrose (Frank) Kennedy, an experienced mining man obtained a copy of
+Breyfogle’s map and combed the country around the buttes in an effort to
+locate the mine. Kennedy had the aid of the Indians and was able to
+obtain, through his squaw Lizzie, such information as Indians had about
+the going and coming of the elusive Breyfogle.
+
+“Some believe the ore came from around Daylight Springs,” Shorty said,
+“but old Lizzie’s map had no mark to indicate Daylight Springs. But it
+does show the buttes and the only buttes in Death Valley are those above
+Stovepipe Wells.
+
+“Kennedy interested Henry E. Findley, an old time Colorado sheriff and
+Clarence Nyman, for years a prospector for Coleman and Smith (the
+Pacific Borax Company). They induced Mat Cullen, a rich Salt Lake mining
+man, to leave his business and come out. They made three trips into the
+valley, looking for that gold. It’s there somewhere.”
+
+At Austin, Breyfogle was outfitted several times to relocate the
+property, but when he reached the lower elevation of the valley, he
+seemed to suffer some aberration which would end the trip. His last
+grubstaker was not so considerate. He told Breyfogle that if he didn’t
+find the mine promptly he’d make a sieve of him and was about to do it
+when a companion named Atchison intervened and saved his life. Shortly
+afterward, Breyfogle died from the old wound.
+
+Indian George, repeating a story told him by Panamint Tom, once told me
+that Tom had traced Breyfogle to the mine and after Breyfogle’s death
+went back and secured some of the ore. Tom guarded his secret. He
+covered the opening with stone and leaving, walked backwards,
+obliterating his tracks with a greasewood brush. Later when Tom returned
+prepared to get the gold he found that a cloudburst had filled the
+canyon with boulders, gravel and silt, removing every landmark and
+Breyfogle’s mine was lost again.
+
+“Some day maybe,” George said, “big rain come and wash um out.”
+
+Among the freighters of the early days was John Delameter who believed
+the Breyfogle was in the lower Panamint. Delameter operated a 20 mule
+team freighting service between Daggett and points in both Death Valley
+and Panamint Valley. He told me that he found Breyfogle down in the road
+about twenty-eight miles south of Ballarat with a wound in his leg.
+Breyfogle had come into the Panamint from Pioche, Nevada, and said he
+had been attacked by Indians, his horses stolen, while working on his
+claim which he located merely with a gesture toward the mountains.
+
+Subsequently Delameter made several vain efforts to locate the property,
+but like most lost mines it continues to be lost. But for years it was
+good bait for a grubstake and served both the convincing liar and the
+honest prospector.
+
+Nearly all old timers had a version of the Lost Breyfogle differing in
+details but all agreeing on the chocolate quartz and its richness.
+
+That Breyfogle really lost a valuable mine there can be little doubt,
+but since he is authentically traced from the northern end of Death
+Valley to the southern, and since the chocolate quartz is found in many
+places of that area, one who cares to look for it must cover a large
+territory.
+
+
+One mine that had never been found turned up in a way as amazing as most
+of them are lost.
+
+At Pioche, Nevada, an assayer was suspected of giving greater values to
+samples than they merited. It is known as the “come on.”
+
+In order to trap the suspect, a prospector broke off a piece of old
+grindstone and ordered an assay. “If he gives that any value, it’s proof
+enough he’s a crook,” he told his friends.
+
+Proof of guilt came with the assayer’s report. The grindstone was
+incredibly rich in silver, it said.
+
+“We’ve got the goods on him now,” the outraged prospector announced and
+it was decided to give the assayer a coat of tar and feathers. Wiser
+counsel was accepted, however, and it was decided to give him no more
+business. The fellow was faced with the alternative of starving or
+leaving the country, when he learned the reason of the boycott.
+Conscious of no error in his work, he made another and more careful
+assay. This time the samples yielded even higher values.
+
+It was agreed by all mining engineers of that day that rock like the
+samples never carried silver or gold. But the assayer knew his furnace
+hadn’t lied and he couldn’t believe grindstone makers were mixing silver
+with sand to make the stones. So he traced the grindstone to the quarry
+it came from. The result was the Silver King, one of the richest silver
+mines.
+
+
+THE LOST GUNSIGHT. The first lost mine in Death Valley, preceding that
+of Breyfogle’s by four or five years, was the Gunsight.
+
+A survivor of the Jayhawkers or the Bennett-Arcane party of ’49 (it is
+not clear to which he belonged) after escaping death in the valley, saw
+a deer or antelope and on the point of starvation, took his gun from its
+strap to shoot the animal. Seeing that the sight had been lost, he
+picked up a thin piece of shale and wedged it in the sight slot. Later
+he took the weapon to a gunsmith who removed the makeshift sight and
+upon examination found it to be almost pure silver. “Where I picked it
+up,” said the owner, “there was a mountain of it.”
+
+So begins the history of the Lost Gunsight and the story spread as
+stories will, until ten years later it reached the ears of Dr. Darwin
+French of Oroville, previously mentioned. The doctor became excited and
+in the spring of 1860 organized a party to locate the fabulous mountain
+of silver. Though he searched bravely he failed to find it. However, he
+brought back the first authentic account of what others with a flair for
+lost mines could expect in the way of weather, topography, Indians,
+edible game, vegetation, and water. On this trip, however, he discovered
+silver in the Coso Range.
+
+The following year, 1861, Dr. S. G. George who had been with the French
+party, decided he could find the Lost Gunsight and organized an
+expedition which crossed Panamint Valley, explored Wild Rose Canyon and
+reached the highest spot in Death Valley. But Dr. George’s valiant
+efforts were no luckier than those of Dr. French.
+
+William Manly, author of “Death Valley in Forty-Nine” also tried but
+gained only another tragic experience and came nearer losing his life
+than he did with the Forty-Niners. Lost and without water and beaten to
+his knees, he was deserted by companions and escaped death by a miracle.
+How many have lost their lives trying to find the Gunsight no one knows.
+There are scores of sunken mounds on lonely mesas which an old timer
+will explain tersely: “He was looking for the Gunsight.”
+
+Dr. French, after his failure, pursued another and even more intriguing
+lost mine. With a ready ear for tales of treasure, he heard of a tribe
+of Indians in the Death Valley area who were making bullets for their
+rifles out of gold. Accordingly he organized another party to find the
+gold.
+
+For eleven months Dr. French and his hand-picked comrades combed the
+country. The gold they found would have loaded no gun, but you may add
+the Lost Bullet to your list of lost mines. A member of this party was
+John Searles, for whom Searles’ Lake is named.
+
+Because early prospectors searched for Breyfogle’s lost mine throughout
+the region where he was found scalped, an interesting digression is not
+amiss.
+
+A few miles east of Shoshone, there is a Gunsight mine named, of course,
+by the discoverer in the hope that he’d found the one so long lost. It
+adjoins the Noonday and was a valuable property which belonged to Dr. L.
+D. Godshall of Victorville.
+
+The Noonday produced five million dollars and was operated until silver
+and lead took a price dive. A 12 mile railroad was built from Tecopa to
+haul the ore. The steel rails were later hauled away and the ties went
+into construction of desert homes, sheds, fences, and firewood. For
+years the two properties could have been bought for what-have-you.
+
+Then came Pearl Harbor and a young Kentuckian, Buford Davis, looking
+around for lead or any essential ores that Uncle Sam could use, dropped
+off at Shoshone. Charles Brown told him of the Gunsight and the Noonday.
+Davis inspected the properties, bought them for a relatively small down
+payment. He chose to begin operations on the Noonday and sent Ernie
+Huhn, an experienced miner to deepen the shaft.
+
+“Honest to God,” Ernie told me, “I hadn’t dug a foot when I turned up
+the prettiest vein of lead I’d ever seen.”
+
+In the next six years the Noonday produced approximately a gross of nine
+million dollars and a net of probably six million dollars.
+
+These figures were given me by Don Kempfer, mining engineer and Shoshone
+resident, from estimates which he believed accurate.
+
+In 1947 with the rich rewards attained but as yet unenjoyed, Buford
+Davis made a hurried airplane trip to Salt Lake. Returning, he was only
+a few moments from a safe landing when the plane crashed and all aboard
+were killed.
+
+Today, (1950) the property belongs to Anaconda and is considered one of
+its most valuable mines.
+
+For those interested in lost mines I offer the list that follows. (The
+names are my own.)
+
+
+THE LOST CHINAMAN: When John Searles was struggling to make a living out
+of the ooze that is called Searles’ Lake he had a mule skinner known as
+Salty Bill Parkinson—a fearless, hard-bitten individual who was the Paul
+Bunyan of Death Valley teamsters.
+
+While loading a wagon with borax, Salty Bill and Searles noticed a man
+staggering down from the Slate Range. They decided he was supercharged
+with desert likker and paid scant attention as he wobbled across the
+flat from the base of the range. A moment later he fell at their feet.
+They saw then that he was a Chinaman; that his tongue was swollen, his
+eyes red and sunken; that he clutched at his throat in a vain effort to
+speak. He could make no intelligible sound and lapsed into
+unconsciousness. They thought he had died and was left on their hands
+for burial.
+
+Salty Bill afterwards stated that he’d said to Searles: “‘Fremont,
+Carson, or the Mormons old Bill Williams, for whom Bill Williams River,
+Bill Williams Mountain, and the town of Williams, Arizona, are named was
+at Resting Springs. He’ll spoil in an hour. I’ll go for a shovel while
+you choose a place to plant him.’ I’d actually turned to go when Searles
+called me back.” Searles had seen some sign of life and after removing a
+canvas bag strapped to his body they took him to a nearby shed, gave him
+a few spoonfuls of water and eventually he was restored to
+consciousness. He lay in a semi-stupor all the afternoon and was
+obsessed with the idea that he was going to die. His chief concern was
+to get to Mojave so that he could take a stage for a seaport and die in
+China or failing, arrange for the burial of his bones with those of his
+ancestors.
+
+He had been working at Old Harmony Borax Works, picking cotton-ball
+borax with other Chinese employed by the company, but tiring of abuse by
+a tough boss, he’d asked for his wages and walked out. Some Piutes told
+him of a short cut across the Panamint and this he took.
+
+En route he picked up a piece of rich float, stuck it into his bag.
+Farther on his journey he ran out of water and became hopelessly lost.
+He managed to reach the Slate Range, however, and from the summit saw
+Searles’ Lake. Though in no condition to stand the rough trip to Mojave
+he begged to be sent there and yielding finally, Salty Bill, ready to
+leave with his load, threw the Chinaman on his wagon and started on his
+trip.
+
+Before reaching Mojave, the Chinaman’s condition became worse and Salty
+Bill stopped the team in answer to his yells. The canvas sack lay
+alongside the stricken Chinaman and reaching for it, he brought out a
+lump of ore.
+
+“Never in my life,” said Salty Bill, “have I seen ore like that.”
+
+The Chinaman gave the ore to Salty, thanked him for his friendly
+treatment, told him that at a place in the Panamint where “the Big
+Timber pitches down into a steep canyon,” he had found the float. Again
+he expressed his belief that he was going to die and exacted a promise
+from Salty that if death came before reaching Mojave, Salty would see
+that his remains be shipped to China, adding that any Chinaman in Mojave
+would provide money if needed. “You find the gold and keep it,” he told
+Salty. “For me—no good. No can....”
+
+The journey was completed and Salty learned that the Chinaman did die at
+Mojave and that a countryman there saw that the remains were sent to the
+Flowery Kingdom.
+
+Salty Bill showed the ore to John Searles and Searles, usually
+indifferent to yarns of hidden ledges, was even more excited than Salty.
+For four or five years the two men made trips in search of the place
+where Big Timber pitches into a canyon. After these, other tireless
+prospectors sought the elusive ledge but the Lost Chinaman is still
+lost.
+
+
+THE LOST WAGON. Jim Hurley went to Parker, Arizona. Broke, he wanted
+quick money and was looking for placer. The storekeeper was a friend of
+Jim and had previously staked him.
+
+“I’m looking for a place to wash out some gold, but I’ve no money and no
+grub....”
+
+Jim was told of a butte on the Colorado Desert. “It’s good placer ground
+and you ought to pan a few dollars without much trouble....” He provided
+Jim with bacon and beans and feed for his burros.
+
+Jim set out, found the butte, but no gold and decided to try a new
+location. On the way out he saw behind some bushes an old wagon that
+seemed to be half buried in blow sand. Thinking it would be a good
+feeding place for his burros, he went over. On the ground nearby he saw
+the bleached skeleton of a man. He threw aside a half-rotted tarpaulin
+in the wagon bed and discovered fifteen sacks of ore.
+
+It was obvious that the wagon had stood there for a long time. He
+examined the ore and saw that it was rich and of a peculiar color. He
+loaded the ore on his burros, returned to Parker and sent it to the
+smelter. He received in return, $1800. Losing no time, Jim returned to
+find the source of the ore and though for the next five years he looked
+at intervals for a quartz to match that found in the wagon, he could
+find nothing that even resembled it. Where it came from no prospector on
+the desert would even venture an opinion, but all declared they had seen
+no quartz of that peculiar color and all of them knew the country from
+Mexico to Nevada.
+
+But Jim added to his store an adventure and a memory and there is no
+treasure in this life richer than a memory.
+
+
+THE LOST GOLLER. This, I believe, is a lost mine that really exists and
+though the location has been prospected from the days of Dr. Darwin
+French in 1860, none have looked for it except the one who lost it in
+1850. He was John Goller, who came to California with the Jayhawkers.
+
+Goller was a blacksmith and wagon maker and was the first American to
+establish such a business in the pueblo of Los Angeles. After convincing
+the native Californian that his spoke-wheel wagon would function as
+effectively as the rounded slabs of wood, the only vehicles then used,
+he made a comfortable fortune and no one in the pueblo had a reputation
+for better character.
+
+Crossing the Panamint, Goller, though strong and husky, became separated
+from his companions and barely escaped with his life. Coming down a
+Panamint canyon he found some gold nuggets and filled his pockets with
+them. After crossing Panamint Valley and the Slate Range, he was found
+by Mexican vaqueros of Don Ignacio del Valle, owner of the great Camulos
+Rancho. After his recovery he proceeded to Los Angeles. In showing the
+nuggets to friends he said, “I could have filled a wagon with them.”
+
+Goller, because of his means was soon able to take vacations which were
+devoted to looking for the lost location, and though he searched for
+years he found no more nuggets. Finally he found a canyon which he
+believed might have been the site, but no wagon load of nuggets.
+
+John Goller was a solid, clear-thinking man—not the type to chase the
+rainbow. Gold is known to exist in the canyon and some mines have been
+operated with varying success, but none have been outstanding. It is
+quite possible that cloudbursts for which the Panamint is noted washed
+Goller’s gold away or buried it under an avalanche of rock, dirt, and
+gravel. Manly, with his forgivable inclination to error refers to Goller
+as Galler and discounts the story.
+
+“Some day,” said Dr. Samuel Slocum, a man who made a fortune in gold,
+“somebody will find a fabulously rich mine in that canyon.” It is
+located about 12 miles south of Ballarat and is called Goler canyon—one
+of the l’s in Goller’s name having been dropped.
+
+
+THE LOST SPOOK. A spiritualist with tuberculosis came to Ballarat and
+employed an Indian known as Joe Button as packer and guide. He told Joe
+to lead him to the driest spot in the country. Joe took him into the
+Cottonwood Range and left him. The invalid remained for several weeks,
+returned to Ballarat en route to San Bernardino, presumably for
+supplies. He was reticent as to his luck but he had several small sacks
+filled with ore and in his haste to catch the stage, dropped a piece of
+quartz from a loosely tied sack. It was almost solid gold and weighed
+eight ounces.
+
+While in San Bernardino he died. His relatives sold the remaining ore,
+which yielded $7200. They tried to find the claim but failed.
+
+Shorty Harris heard of it months afterward and looked up Joe Button.
+With his own burros, Joe’s pack horses, and an Indian known as Ignacio,
+he set out. Cloudbursts had washed out the previous trails, filled
+gulches, levelled hills and so transformed the country that the Indian
+was unable to find any trace of his previous course; gave up the hunt
+and turned back.
+
+Shorty cached his supplies and with the meager description Joe could
+give him, searched for weeks. At last he came upon a camp where he
+discovered a collection of pamphlets dealing with the occult, but no
+trails. It was apparent that these had been destroyed by floods and for
+two months Shorty searched for the diggings. A brush pile aroused his
+suspicions and removing it, he found the hole. “The ore had Uncle Sam’s
+eagle all over it,” Shorty said, “and the world was mine.”
+
+“I returned to my camp, started spending the money. A million dollars
+for a rest home for old worn-out prospectors. Fifty thousand a year for
+all my pals....”
+
+Shorty ate his supper, spread his blankets and went to sleep with his
+dream. In the middle of the night he awoke. Something was running over
+his blanket. He raised up and in the moonlight recognized the only thing
+on earth he was afraid of—the “hydrophobic skunk.”
+
+“I started packing right now,” Shorty said, “and walked out. There’s a
+mine there and whoever wants it can have it. I don’t.”
+
+
+THE LOST CANYON has some evidence of reality. Jack Allen, a miner and
+prospector of almost superhuman endurance, got drunk at Skidoo and
+filled with remorse and shame the morning after, decided to leave and
+seek a job at the Keane Wonder Mine, about 40 miles northeast across
+Death Valley. To save distance, Allen took a short cut over Sheep
+Mountain and in going through a canyon he picked up a piece of quartz
+and seeing a fleck of color, he broke it. Excited by its apparent
+richness he filled his pockets, noted his bearings and went on his way.
+When he reached the Keane Wonder he took the ore to Joe McGilliland, the
+company’s assayer, who became more excited than the finder. “I’ll put it
+in the button for half,” Joe said.
+
+Allen agreed. The assay showed values as high as $20,000 to the ton. He
+closed his office and ran out to find Jack working in the mine. “Chuck
+this job,” he cried. “Go back to that claim quick as you can. Get your
+monuments up and record the notices.”
+
+Jack Allen bought a burro, loaded his supplies and went back only to
+discover that a cloudburst had destroyed all his landmarks.
+
+Both Shorty Harris and “Bob” Eichbaum, who established Stove Pipe Wells
+resort, considered this the best chance among all the legends of lost
+mines. It is wild, rough, and largely virgin country and because of that
+the hardiest prospectors always passed it by.
+
+
+THE LOST JOHNNIE. An Indian known as Johnnie used to come into York’s
+store at Ballarat about once a month with gold in bullion form. He would
+sell it to York or trade it for supplies. Frequently he had credits
+amounting to a thousand or more dollars.
+
+Other Indians soon learned of Johnnie’s mine and would trail him when he
+left town, but none were able to outsmart him. That it was near Arastre
+Spring was generally believed. Upon one occasion Johnnie was seen
+leaving the old arastre and disappear in the canyon. Immediately
+evidence that the arastre had been used within the hour was discovered.
+For years no prospector worked in that region without keeping his eyes
+peeled for Johnnie’s bonanza.
+
+
+
+
+                             Chapter XXIII
+                      Panamint City. Genial Crooks
+
+
+The first search for gold in Death Valley country was in Panamint
+Valley.
+
+From the summit of the Slate Range on the road from Trona, one comes
+suddenly upon an enchanting and unforgettable view of the Panamint. If
+you are one who thrills at breath taking scenery you will not speak. You
+will stand and look and think. Your thoughts will be of dead worlds; of
+the silence spread like a shroud over all that you see.
+
+Below, a yellow road twists in and out of hidden dry washes, around
+jutting hills to end in the green mesquite that hides the ghost town of
+Ballarat. There the Panamint lifts two miles—its gored sides a riot of
+pastelled colors.
+
+If you have coached yourself with trivia of history it will require
+imagination’s aid to accept the fact that from this wasteland came
+fortunes and industries of world-wide fame. From New York to San
+Francisco on envied social thrones, sit the children and grandchildren
+of those who with pick and shovel, here dug the family fortune in ragged
+overalls.
+
+Only recently a descendant of one of these, living in a city far
+removed, informed me her mansion was for sale, “because the neighborhood
+is being ruined....” A sheep herder newly rich on war profits, was
+moving in.
+
+Eleven miles north of Ballarat, Surprise Canyon, which leads to Panamint
+City, opens on a broad, alluvial fan that tilts sharply to the valley
+floor.
+
+In April, 1873, W. T. Henderson, whose first trip into Death Valley
+country was made to find the Lost Gunsight, came again with R. B.
+Stewart and R. C. Jacobs. In Surprise Canyon they discovered silver
+which ran as high as $4000 a ton and filed more than 80 location
+notices.
+
+Henderson was an adventurer of uncertain character who had roamed
+western deserts like a nomad. During the Indian war that threatened
+extermination of the white settlers in Inyo county, Thieving Charlie, a
+Piute, was induced by outnumbered whites to approach his warring
+tribesmen under a flag of truce and succeeded in getting eleven of them
+to return with him to Camp Independence for a peace talk. Henderson,
+with two companions waylaid and murdered them.
+
+He had been a member of the posse organized by Harry Love to shoot on
+sight California’s most famous bandit—Joaquin Murietta and boasted that
+he fired the bullet which killed the glamorous Joaquin. It was he who
+cut off and pickled the bandit’s head as evidence to get the reward. At
+the same time he pickled the hand of Three Fingered Jack Garcia,
+Joaquin’s chief lieutenant, and the bloodiest monster the West ever saw.
+Garcia had an odd habit of cutting off the ears of his victims and
+stringing them for a saddle ornament. The slaying of Joaquin was not a
+pretty adventure and as the details came out, Henderson renounced the
+honor.
+
+The grewsome vouchers which obtained the reward became the attraction
+for the morbid on a San Francisco street and there above the din of
+traffic one heard a spieler chant the thrills it gave “for only two
+measly bits....” The exhibit was destroyed in the San Francisco fire and
+earthquake of 1906.
+
+In his book, “On the Old West Coast” Major Horace Bell states that
+Henderson confided to him there was never a day nor night that Joaquin
+Murietta did not come to him and though headless, would demand the
+return of his head; that Henderson was never frightened by the
+apparition, which would vanish after Henderson explained why he couldn’t
+return the head and his excuse for cutting it off.
+
+Bell quotes Henderson: “I would never have cut Joaquin’s head off except
+for the excitement of the chase and the orders of Harry Love.”
+
+To give credence to the ghost story he says of Henderson, “He was for
+several years my neighbor and a more genial and generous fellow I never
+met....” Major Bell, it is known, was not always strictly factual.
+
+Following the Surprise Canyon strike, Panamint City was quickly built
+and quickly filled with thugs who lived by their guns; gamblers and
+painted girls who lived by their wits.
+
+An engaging sidewalk promoter known as E. P. Raines, who possessed a
+good front and gall in abundance, but no money, assured the owners of
+the Panamint claims that he could raise the capital necessary for
+development. He set out for the city, registered at the leading hotel,
+attached the title of Colonel to his name; exchanged a worthless check
+for $25 and made for the barroom. It was no mere coincidence that Mr.
+Raines before ordering his drink, parked himself alongside a group of
+the town’s richest citizens and began to toy with an incredibly rich
+sample of ore. It was natural that members of the group should notice
+it. Particularly the multimillionaire, Senator John P. Jones, Nevada
+silver king.
+
+Soon the charming crook was the life of the party. His $25 spent, he
+actually borrowed $1000 from Jones. Having drunk his guests under the
+table, Mr. Raines went forth for further celebration and landed broke in
+the hoosegow. Hearing of his misadventure, his new friends promptly went
+to his rescue. “... Outrage ... biggest night this town ever had....”
+
+To make amends for the city’s inhospitable blunder, Raines was taken to
+his hostelry, given a champagne bracer and made the honor guest at
+breakfast. “Where’s the Senator?” he asked. Informed that Senator Jones
+had taken a train for Washington, Raines quickened “Why, he was
+expecting me to go with him....” He jumped up, fumbled through his
+pockets in a pretended search for money. “Heavens—my purse is gone!”
+Instantly a half dozen hands reached for the hip and Mr. Raines was on
+his way.
+
+It required but a few moments to get $15,000 from the Senator and his
+partner, Senator William R. Stewart, for the Panamint claims. He also
+sold Jones the idea of a railroad from a seaport at Los Angeles to his
+mines and this was partially built. The project ended in Cajon Pass. The
+scars of the tunnel started may still be seen.
+
+Jones and Stewart organized the Panamint Mining Company with a capital
+of $2,000,000. Other claims were bought but immediate development was
+delayed by difficulties in obtaining title because many of the owners
+were outlaws, difficult to find. A few were located in the penitentiary
+and there received payment. For some of the claims the promoters paid
+$350,000.
+
+On June 29, 1875, the first mill began to crush ore from the Jacobs
+Wonder mine. Panamint City became one of the toughest and most colorful
+camps of the West. It was strung for a mile up and down narrow Surprise
+Canyon. It was believed that here was a mass of silver greater than that
+on the Comstock and shares were active on the markets.
+
+The most pretentious saloon in the town was that of Dave Nagle, who
+later as the bodyguard of U. S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field,
+killed Judge David Terry, distinguished jurist, but stormy petrel of
+California Vigilante days. Judge Terry had represented, then married his
+client, the Rose of Sharon—Sarah Althea Hill—in her suit to determine
+whether she was wife or mistress of Senator Sharon, Comstock
+millionaire. Feuding had resulted with Field, the trial judge. Meeting
+in a railroad dining room, Judge Terry slapped Justice Field’s face and
+Nagle promptly killed Terry.
+
+Poker at Panamint City was never a piker’s game. Bets of $10,000 on two
+pair attracted but little comment. Gunning was regarded as a minor
+nuisance, but funerals worried the town’s butcher. He had the only wagon
+that had survived the steep canyon road into the camp. “I bought it,” he
+complained, “to haul fresh meat, but since there’s no hearse I never
+know when I’ll have to unload a quarter of beef to haul a stiff to
+Sourdough Canyon.”
+
+Panamint City attained an estimated population of 3,000. Harris and
+Rhine, merchants, having the only safe in the town permitted patrons to
+deposit money for safe keeping and often had large sums. On one occasion
+they had the $10,000 payroll of the Hemlock mine.
+
+A clerk arriving early at the store, suddenly faced two gentlemen who
+directed him to open the safe and pass out the money. “Just as well
+count it as you fork it over,” one ordered. The clerk had counted $4000
+when he was told to stop. “This’ll do for the present,” the spokesman
+said. “We’ll come back and get the rest.”
+
+“Yeh,” added his partner. “Too damned many thugs in this town.”
+
+They sallied forth on a spending spree. The down-and-out along the
+mile-long street received generous portions of the loot and a widow
+whose husband had been killed in a mine explosion, received $500.
+
+These bandits, Small and McDonald, thereafter became incredibly popular
+and the legend follows that what they stole from those who had, they
+shared with those who hadn’t.
+
+Wells-Fargo and Company offered a reward of $1000 for their capture, but
+their arrest was never accomplished. Invariably they were apprised of
+the approach of pursuers and simply retired to some convenient canyon.
+The bandits further endeared themselves to the citizenry when Stewart
+and Jones arranged for the importation of a hundred Chinese laborers.
+
+This aroused the ire of the white miners and a meeting was called to
+protest. “This is a white man’s town,” was the cry of labor.
+
+Small and McDonald agreed. “Just leave it to us,” they told the leaders.
+“No use in a lotta fellows getting hurt.” They stationed themselves at
+the mouth of the canyon and when the coolies arrived, a sudden volley
+from the bandits’ six-guns brought the caravan to a halt. The frightened
+Chinamen leaped from the hacks and fled in panic across the desert and
+Panamint remained a white man’s town.
+
+Engaged at work around their hideout, Hungry Bill stopped to beg for
+food. They told the Indian to wait until they finished their task. His
+sullen impatience angered Small who booted him down the trail. Hungry
+Bill left cursing and told a prospector whom he met that he would return
+shortly with his tribesmen and assassinate the entire population.
+
+Panamint City was warned but Small and McDonald declared that since they
+had started the trouble, they alone should end it. Accordingly, they set
+out for Hungry Bill’s ranch to stop the attack before it started. But
+near Hungry Bill’s stone corral they were ambushed by the Indians. The
+bandits shot their way into the corral and barricading themselves,
+killed and wounded about half of the renegades, after which the
+remainder fled.
+
+Panamint City harbored a hoard of unsung assassins who merely lay in
+wait, shot the unwary victim down, took his poke, rolled the body into a
+ravine, went up town to spend the money.
+
+One killer who came decided to dominate the field and with that in view
+he set forth to establish himself quickly as a gunman not to be trifled
+with. He chose to display his prowess upon an inoffensive, quiet faro
+dealer known as Jimmy Bruce, who, it was easy to see, “was just a
+chicken-livered punk.” The publicity of a well-done murder in such a
+setting would give prestige.
+
+Armed with two guns, the bully contrived to start an argument with
+Bruce. The indoor white of the gambler seemed to grow whiter as the rage
+of his towering tormenter reached the climax. The players moved out of
+range. The bartenders ducked under the counter. Patrons helpless to
+intervene, fled from the kill.
+
+A shot rang out. Cautiously, the bartenders lifted their heads. On the
+floor lay the bad man. Mr. Bruce was calmly lighting a cigar.
+
+There was consternation among the killers. They swore vengeance. After
+five of them had fallen before Bruce’s gun, he was let alone.
+
+The silent faro dealer, it was learned too late, was surpassingly quick
+on the trigger.
+
+A spot somewhat distant from the regular cemetery was chosen for the
+burial place and it became known as Jim Bruce’s private graveyard.
+
+Remi Nadeau, a French Canadian, was the first to haul freight into
+Panamint City. Nadeau was a genius of transportation. There was no
+country too rough, too remote, too wild for him. He came to Los Angeles
+in 1861 from Utah and teamed as far east as Montana.
+
+The Cerro Gordo mine, on the eastern side of Owens Lake in Inyo County
+began to ship ore in 1869 and Nadeau obtained a contract to haul the ore
+to Wilmington where it was shipped by boat to San Francisco. He soon had
+to increase his equipment to 32 teams, using more than 500 animals. For
+his return trip he bought such commodities as he could peddle or leave
+for sale at stations he built along the route.
+
+In 1872, the contract having expired, Judson and Belshaw, owners of the
+mine, received a lower bid and Nadeau was left with 500 horses on his
+hands and heavily in debt. He wanted to dispose of his outfit for the
+benefit of his creditors but they had confidence in him and persuaded
+him to “carry on.” Borax discovered in Nevada saved him. Meanwhile the
+lower bidder on the Cerro Gordo job proved unsatisfactory and Judson and
+Belshaw asked Nadeau to take the old job back. But now Nadeau informed
+them they would have to buy a half interest in his outfit and advance
+$150,000 to construct relay stations at Mud Springs, Mojave, Lang’s
+Springs, Red Rock, Little Lake, Cartago, and other points. They gladly
+agreed.
+
+Shortly after Nadeau began hauling across the desert, he picked up a man
+suffering from gunshot and crazed from thirst. Taking the victim to his
+nearest station, he left instructions that he be cared for.
+
+Sometime afterward, one of Nadeau’s competitors whose trains had been
+held up several times by outlaws, wondered why none of Nadeau’s teams or
+stations had been molested. At the time, Nadeau himself didn’t know that
+the fellow whom he’d picked up on the desert was Tiburcio Vasquez, the
+bandit terror.
+
+Vasquez naively condoned his banditry. It disgusted him at dances he
+said, to see the senoritas of his race favor the interloping Americans.
+He had a singular power over women. When Sheriff William Rowland
+effected his capture, women of Los Angeles filled his cell with flowers.
+He was hanged at San Jose.
+
+Nadeau was now hauling ore from the Minnietta and the Modoc mines in the
+Argus Range on the west side of Panamint Valley. The Modoc was the
+property of George Hearst, the father of the publisher, William Randolph
+Hearst. These mines were directly across the valley from Panamint City
+and because of Nadeau’s record for building roads in places no other
+dared to go, Jones and Stewart engaged him to haul out of Surprise
+Canyon, which was barely wide enough in places for a burro with a pack.
+
+On a hill, locally known as “Seventeen”—that being the per cent of
+grade, located on the old highway between Ballarat and Trona, one may
+see the dim outline of a road pitching down precipitously to the valley
+floor. This road was built by Nadeau and one marvels that anything short
+of steam power could move a load from bottom to top.
+
+Acquiring a fortune, Nadeau built the first three-story building in Los
+Angeles and the Nadeau Hotel, long the city’s finest, retained favor
+among many wealthy pioneer patrons long after the more glamorous Angelus
+and Alexandria were built in the early 1900’s.
+
+The first ore from the Panamint mines was shipped to England and because
+of its richness showed a profit, but difficulties arose in recovery
+processes which they did not know how to overcome. The mines would have
+paid fabulously under present day processes.
+
+Finis was written to the story of Panamint after two hectic years and in
+1877 Jones and Stewart had lost $2,000,000 and quit. It would be more
+factual to state that since they had received from the public $2,000,000
+to put into it, who lost what is a guess.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XXIV
+                 Indian George. Legend of the Panamint
+
+
+The previous chapter records accepted history of the silver discovery at
+Panamint City. Indian George Hansen had another version which he told me
+at his ranch 11 miles north of Ballarat. It fits the period and the
+people then in the country.
+
+George, when a youngster lived in the Coso Range. East of the Coso there
+was no white man for 100 miles and renegades fleeing from their crimes
+and deserters from the Union army sought hideouts in the Panamint. Thus
+George was employed as a guide by three outlaws to lead them to safe
+refuge.
+
+George, a Shoshone, had both friends and relatives among the Shoshones
+and the Piutes and took the bandits into Surprise Canyon where a camp
+for the night was chosen. While staking out his pack animals, George
+discovered a ledge of silver ore. Breaking off a chunk, he stuck it into
+his pocket, saying nothing about it until they were out of the locality.
+Then he showed the specimen and to promote a deal, gave one of them a
+sample. They wanted to see the ledge but George refused to disclose it.
+Then George said the three fellows stepped aside and after talking in
+whispers told him they didn’t like the country and returning with him to
+the Coso Range, went on their way. Two or three months later they were
+back to bargain.
+
+George had traded with the white man before. They had always given him a
+few dollars and a rosy promise. “Now me pretty foxy. So I say, ‘no want
+money. Maybe lose.’ Him say, ‘what hell you want?’
+
+“‘Heap good job all time I live.’
+
+“‘Okay,’ him say. ‘We give you job.’
+
+“I show claim.” George paused, a look of smoldering hate in his dark
+eyes, then added: “I get job. Two weeks. Him say, ‘you fired.’ I get
+$50.”
+
+All Indians and many of the old timers believe that the ledge George
+found was that for which Jones and Stewart paid $2,000,000.
+
+George made another deal worthy of mention. The town of Trona on
+Searles’ Lake needed the water owned by George’s relative, Mabel, who
+herded 500 goats and sold them to butchers at Skidoo, Goldfield, and
+Rhyolite where they became veal steak or lamb chops. Trona offered $30 a
+month for the use of the water. Mabel consulted George as head man of
+the Shoshones and advised Trona that the sum would not be considered. It
+must pay $27.50 or do without. A superstition regarding numbers
+accounted for the price George fixed for the water.
+
+My acquaintance with Indian George began on my first trip to Ballarat
+with Shorty Harris and was the result of a stomach ache Shorty had. I
+suggested a trip to a doctor at Trona instead.
+
+“No, sir. I’ll see old Indian George. If these doctors knew as much as
+these old Indians, there wouldn’t be any cemeteries.”
+
+I asked what evidence he had of George’s skill.
+
+“Plenty. You know Sparkplug (Michael Sherlock)? He was in a bad way.
+Fred Gray put a mattress in his pickup, laid Sparkplug on it and hauled
+him over to Trona. Nurses took him inside. Doctor looked him over and
+came out and asked Fred if he knew where old Sparkplug wanted to be
+buried. ‘Why, Ballarat, I reckon,’ Fred said.
+
+“Well, you take him back quick. He’ll be dead when you get there. Better
+hurry. He’ll spoil on you this hot weather.’
+
+“Fred raced back, taking curves on Seventeen with two wheels hanging
+over the gorge, but he made it; stopped in front of Sparkplug’s shack,
+jumped out and called to me to bring a pick and shovel. Then he ran over
+to Bob Warnack’s shack for help to make a coffin. Indian George happened
+to ride by the pickup and saw Sparkplug’s feet sticking out. He crawled
+off his cayuse, took a look, lifted Sparkplug’s eyelids and leaving his
+horse ground-hitched, he went out in the brush and yanked up some roots
+here and there. Then he went up to Hungry Hattie’s and came back with a
+handful of chicken guts and rabbit pellets; brewed ’em in a tomato can
+and when he got through he funneled it down Sparkplug’s throat and in no
+time at all Sparkplug was up and packing his flivver to go prospecting.
+If you don’t believe me, there’s Sparkplug right over there tinkering
+with his car.”
+
+George’s age has been a favorite topic of writers of Death Valley
+history for the last 30 years.
+
+I stopped for water once at the little stream flumed out of Hall’s
+Canyon to supply the ranch. He was irrigating his alfalfa in a
+temperature of 122 degrees. I had brought him three or four dozen
+oranges and suggested that Mabel would like some of the fruit.
+
+“Heavy work for a man of your age,” I said.
+
+He bit into an orange, eating both peeling and pulp. “Me papoose. Me
+only 107 years old.”
+
+There were less than a dozen oranges left when I began to cast about for
+a tactful way to preserve a few for Mabel. Seeing her chopping wood in
+the scorching sun I said, “I’ll bet Mabel would like an orange just now.
+Shall I call her?”
+
+“No—no—” George grunted. “Oranges heap bad for squaw,” and speeding up
+his eating, he removed the last menace to Mabel.
+
+Once George told me of watching the sufferings of the Jayhawkers and
+Bennett-Arcane party:
+
+“Me little boy, first time I see white man. Whiskers make me think him
+devil. I run. I see some of Bennett party die. When all dead, we go
+down. First time Indians ever see flour. Squaws think it what make white
+men white and put it on their faces.”
+
+I asked George why he didn’t go down and aid the whites. “Why?” he
+asked, “to get shot?”
+
+“How many Shoshones are left?” I asked George.
+
+He counted them on his fingers. “Nineteen. Soon, none.”
+
+George died in 1944 and it is safe I believe, to say that for 110 years
+he had baffled every agency of death on America’s worst desert. Because
+his ranch was a landmark and the water that came from the mountains was
+good, it was a natural stopping place and he was known to thousands.
+Following a curious custom of Indians George adopted the Swedish name
+Hansen because it had euphony he liked.
+
+
+The Panamint is the locale of the legend of Swamper Ike, first told I
+believe by Old Ranger over a nation-wide hookup, while he was M.C. of
+the program “Death Valley Days.”
+
+A daring, but foolhardy youngster, with wife and baby, undertook to
+cross the range. Unacquainted with the country and scornful of its
+perils, he reached the crest, but there ran out of water. He left his
+wife and the baby on the trail, comfortably protected in the shade of a
+bluff and started down the Death Valley side of the range to find water.
+
+After a thorough search of the canyons about, he climbed to a higher
+level, scanned the floor of the valley. Seeing a lake that reflected the
+peaks of the Funeral Range he made for it under a withering sun. He
+learned too late that it was a mirage and exhausted, started back only
+to be beaten down and die.
+
+After waiting through a night of terror, the young mother prepared a
+comfortable place for her baby and went in search of her husband. She
+too saw the blue lake and made for it, saw it vanish as he had. Then she
+discovered his tracks and undertook to follow him, but she also was
+beaten down and fell dead within a few feet of his lifeless body.
+
+A band of wandering Cocopah Indians crossing the range, found the baby.
+They took the child to their own habitation on the Colorado river and
+named him Joe Salsuepuedes, which is Indian for “Get-out-if-you-can.”
+
+Joe grew up as Indian, burned dark by the desert sun. But he had an idea
+he wasn’t Indian. Learning that he was a foundling, picked up in the
+Panamint, he set out for Death Valley, possessed of a singular faith
+that somehow he would discover evidence that he was a white man.
+
+He obtained a job as swamper for the Borax Company. When he gave his
+name the boss said, “Too many Joe’s working here. We’ll call you Ike.”
+
+Early Indians, as you may see in Dead Man’s Canyon, the Valley of Fire,
+and numerous canyons in the western desert had a habit of scratching
+stories of adventure or signs to inform other Indians of unusual
+features of a locality on the canyon walls—often coloring the tracing
+with dyes from herbs or roots. Knowing this, Swamper Ike was always
+alert for these hieroglyphs on any boulder he passed or in any canyon he
+entered.
+
+One day Swamper Ike went out to look for a piece of onyx that he could
+polish and give to the girl he loved. While seeking the onyx he noticed
+a flat slab of travertine and on it the picture story of
+“Get-out-if-you-can.”
+
+Swamper Ike had justified his faith.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XXV
+                          Ballarat. Ghost Town
+
+
+In the early 1890’s gold discovered on the west side of the Panamint in
+Pleasant Canyon caused the rush responsible for Ballarat. For more than
+20 years the district had been combed by prospectors holed in at Post
+Office Spring, about one half mile south of the site upon which Ballarat
+was subsequently built. Here the government had a small army post and
+here soldiers, outlaws, and adventurers received their mail from a box
+wired in the crotch of a mesquite tree.
+
+The Radcliffe, which was the discovery mine was a profitable producer.
+The timbers and machinery were hauled from Randsburg over the Slate
+Range and across Panamint Valley, to the mouth of the canyon. There,
+under the direction of Oscar Rogers, it was packed on burros and taken
+up the steep grade to the mine site.
+
+Copperstain Joe, a noted half-breed Indian made the next strike. With a
+specimen, he went to Mojave where he showed it to Jim Cooper. For five
+dollars and a gallon of whiskey he led Cooper to the site.
+
+But his deal with Cooper interested me less than the cunning of his
+burro, Slick. Copperstain strode into a hardware store and asked for a
+lock. “It’s for Slick’s chain. Picks a lock soon as I turn my back—dam’
+him.”
+
+The merchant showed him a lock of intricate mechanism, “He won’t pick
+this. Costs more, but worth it.”
+
+“I don’t care what it costs,” Copperstain said and bought it. Later he
+looped the chain around the burro’s feet, fastened the links with the
+lock and tethered Slick to a stake. “That’ll hold you—” he said
+defiantly.
+
+The next morning he was back in the store, belligerent. “Helluva lock
+you sold me. Slick picked it in no time.”
+
+“Impossible.”
+
+“The burro’s gone, ain’t he?” Copperstain bristled, and reaching into
+his pocket, produced the lock. “See that nail in the keyhole? I didn’t
+put it there. Slick just found a nail—that’s all.”
+
+The future of Pleasant Canyon seemed assured and it was decided to move
+the two saloons and grocery to the flats below, where a town would have
+room to grow.
+
+When citizens met to choose a name, George Riggins, a young Australian
+suggested the new town be given a name identified with gold the world
+over. Ballarat in his native country met the requirement and its name
+was adopted.
+
+Shorty Harris discovered The Star, The Elephant, the World Beater, The
+St. Patrick. In Tuba, Jail, Surprise, and Goler Canyons more strikes
+were made. It is curious that none were made in Happy Canyon.
+
+The production figures of early mines are rarely dependable and the
+yield is often confused with that obtained by swindlers from outright
+sale or stock promotion. My friend, Oscar Rogers, superintendent, told
+me the Radcliffe produced a net profit of approximately $500,000. Less
+authentic are figures attributed to the following:
+
+The O. B. Joyful in Tuba Canyon, $250,000; The Gem in Jail Canyon,
+$150,000; and Shorty Harris’ World Beater, $200,000.
+
+Among the noted of Ballarat residents was John LeMoyne, a Frenchman. He
+discovered a silver mine in Death Valley but the best service he gave
+the desert was a recipe for coffee. He walked into Ballarat one day and
+had lunch. The lady who owned the cafe asked if everything suited. “All
+but the coffee,” John said.
+
+“How do you make your coffee?” she asked.
+
+“Madame, there’s no trick about making good coffee. Plenty coffee. Dam’
+little water.”
+
+From one end of Death Valley country to the other, coffee is judged by
+John LeMoyne’s standard. You may not always get it, but mention it and
+the waiter will know.
+
+For years LeMoyne held his silver claim in spite of offers far beyond
+its value, which he believed was $5,000,000. But once when the urge to
+return to his beloved France was strong and Goldfield, Tonopah, and
+Rhyolite excited the nation, he weakened and decided to accept an offer
+said to have been $200,000. “But,” he told the buyers, “it must be
+cash.”
+
+After a huddle, John’s demand was met and a check offered. John brushed
+it aside. “But this eez not cash,” he complained. No, he wouldn’t go to
+town to get the cash. He had work to do. “You get eet.”
+
+Disgusted, the buyers left and John LeMoyne continued to wear his rags,
+eat his beans, and dream of La Belle France.
+
+A young Shoshone Indian came into Keeler excited as an Indian ever gets,
+looked up Shorty Harris and said: “Short Man, your friend go out. No
+come back. Maybe him sick.” It was midsummer, but LeMoyne had undertaken
+to reach his claim.
+
+In the bottom of the valley, Shorty identified LeMoyne’s tracks by a
+peculiar hobnail which LeMoyne used in his shoes. He followed the tracks
+to Cottonwood Spring and there found an old French pistol which he knew
+had belonged to LeMoyne. Convinced he was on the right trail, he went on
+and after a mile or two met Death Valley Scotty.
+
+“I know why you’re here,” Scotty said. “I’ve just found his body.”
+
+LeMoyne was partially eaten by coyotes and nearby were his dead burros.
+Though tethered to the mesquite with slender cotton cords which they
+could easily have broken, the patient asses had elected to die beside
+him.
+
+And there ended the dream of the glory trail back to the France he
+loved. Those who believe in the jinx will find something to sustain
+their faith in the record of John LeMoyne’s mine.
+
+After LeMoyne’s death, Wild Bill Corcoran who had made and lost fortunes
+in the lush days of Rhyolite, set out from Owens Valley to relocate it.
+Never a ranting prohibitionist, Bill believed that the best remedy for
+snake bite was likker in the blood when the snake bit. When he reached
+Darwin he was not feeling well and stopped long enough for a nip with
+friends and to get a youngster to drive his car and help at the camp.
+
+It was midsummer, with record temperature but Bill wanted John LeMoyne’s
+mine. Becoming worse in the valley he stopped in Emigrant Canyon and
+sent the boy back for a doctor. Bill crawled into an old shack under the
+hill. When the boy and the doctor came, they found Bill Corcoran on the
+floor, his hand stretched toward a bottle of bootleg liquor. His soul
+had gone over the hill.
+
+One after another, five others followed Bill to file on LeMoyne’s claim
+and each in turn joined Bill over the hill.
+
+LeMoyne’s Christian name was Jean. His surname has been spelled both
+Lemoigne and Lemoine. The claim from which Indians had formerly taken
+lead was filed upon by LeMoyne in 1882.
+
+Joe Gorsline, a graduate of Columbia, with a background of wealth, came
+to Ballarat during the rush, looked over the town. “Wouldn’t spend
+another day in this dump for all the gold in the mint,” he announced. He
+had a few drinks, heard a few yarns, eyed a few girls in the honkies. It
+was all new to Joe, but something about the informalities of life
+appealed to him and in a little while he was renamed Joe Goose.
+
+Then the town’s constable shot its Judge and Ballarat chose him to
+succeed the deceased. Not liking the laws of the code, he made a batch
+of his own, which were never questioned. While watching the flow of time
+and liquor, he “went desert” and put aside the things that might have
+been for the more alluring things-as-they-are.
+
+When Ballarat became a ghost town, Joe Gorsline took his body to the
+city, but his soul remained and years afterward when he died, a hearse
+came down the mountain and in it was Joe Gorsline, home again. He is
+buried in a little cemetery out on the flat and in the spring the golden
+sun cups, grow all around and you walk on them to get to his grave.
+
+Adding a cultural touch to Ballarat was an English nobleman who “going
+desert” tossed his title out of the window, donned overalls and brogans
+and promptly earned the approving verdict, “An all right guy.” Soon he
+was drinking with the toper and dancing with the demimonde. Like others,
+he did his own cooking and washing. He lived in a ’dobe cabin which,
+because it was on the main street, had its window shades always down.
+
+But there was one little custom of his British routine he never
+abandoned and this was discovered by accident. He stopped in John
+Lambert’s saloon one evening before going to his cabin for dinner. He
+left his watch on the bar and had gone before Lambert noticed it. An
+hour later Lambert, having an opportunity to get away, took the watch to
+the cabin. John thus reported what he saw: “He was eating his dinner and
+bigod—he had on a white shirt, wing collar, and swallow tail.”
+
+Ballarat chuckled but no one suggested a lynching party. They knew how
+deep grow the roots in the soil one loves. “Maybe,” said Lambert,
+“that’s why John Bull always wins the last battle. They give up
+nothing.”
+
+A familiar figure throughout Death Valley country was
+Johnny-Behind-the-Gun—small and wiry and as much a part of the land as
+the lizard. His moniker was acquired from his habit of settling disputes
+without cluttering up the courts. Johnny, whose name was Cyte, accounted
+for three or four sizable fortunes. Having sold a claim for $35,000 he
+once bought a saloon and gambling hall in Rhyolite, forswearing
+prospecting forever.
+
+Johnny advertised his whiskey by drinking it and the squareness of his
+game, by sitting in it. One night the gentleman opposite was overwhelmed
+with luck and his pockets bulged with $30,000 of Johnny’s money. Having
+lost his last chip, Johnny said, “I’ll put up dis place. Ve play vun
+hand and quit.”
+
+Johnny lost. He got up, reached for his hat. “Vell, my lucky friend,
+I’ll take a last drink mit you.” He tossed the liquor, lighted a cigar.
+“Goodnight, chentlemen,” he said. “I go find me anudder mine.”
+
+Johnny had several claims near the Keane Wonder in the Funeral
+Mountains, held by a sufferance not uncommon among old timers, who
+respected a notice regardless of legal formalities.
+
+Senator William M. Stewart, Nevada mining magnate, had employed Kyle
+Smith, a young mining engineer to go into the locality and see what he
+could find. Smith, a capable and likable chap, in working over the
+districts, located several claims open for filing by reason of Johnny’s
+failure to do his assessment work.
+
+It is not altogether clear what happened between Johnny and Smith, but
+Smith’s body was found after it had lain in the desert sun all day.
+There being no witnesses the only fact produced by sheriff and coroner
+was that Smith was dead. Johnny went free. Other escapades with
+Johnny-Behind-the-Gun occurred with such frequency that he was finally
+removed from the desert for awhile as the guest of the state.
+
+In a deal with Tom Kelly, Johnny was hesitant about signing some papers
+according to an understanding. His trigger quickness was explained to
+Kelly who was not impressed. He went to Johnny and asked him to sign up.
+Johnny refused. Kelly said calmly, “Johnny, do you see that telephone
+pole?”
+
+“Yes, I see. Vot about?”
+
+“If you don’t sign, you’re going to climb it.” Johnny signed. He put his
+gun away when he acquired a lodging house at Beatty, where he died in
+1944.
+
+Reminiscing one day in the old saloon he had owned, Chris Wichts slapped
+the bar: “I’ve taken as much as $65,000 over this old bar in one month.”
+He had none of it now but in a little cabin in Surprise Canyon with a
+stream running by his door, and a memory that retained only the laughs
+of his life, he didn’t need $65,000.
+
+“A city fellow came into the cafe one day. Snooty sort. I told him we
+had some nice tender burro steaks. He flew off the handle. Said he
+wanted porterhouse or nothing. I served him. When he finished he
+apologized for being rude and said his porterhouse was good as he ever
+ate. I went into the kitchen and came back with a burro shank, shoved it
+in his face and said, ‘Mister, you ate the meat off this burro leg.’ I
+thought he’d murder me.”
+
+One day when Ballarat travel was heavy, a dapper passenger dropped off
+the stage, entered the saloon, bought a drink and paid for it with a $20
+gold piece, getting $19.50 in change. When he’d gone, Shorty Harris
+standing by said: “Chris, that money doesn’t sound right.”
+
+Chris examined it. The gold piece had been split, hollowed out and
+filled with alloy. Chris worried awhile, then brightened when he noticed
+his place was full of loafers playing solitaire; pulling at soggy pipes;
+waiting for a “live one.” “Boys,” said Chris, “old Whiskers ain’t
+getting much play. Let’s go down and see him.”
+
+Whiskers was his competitor down the street.
+
+A few moments later the bat-wing doors of Whiskers’ place flew open and
+Chris and his bums swarmed in. Chris laid an arm on the bar. “What’ll it
+be fellows?” Then he turned to the loafers along the walk “Line up, you
+guys and have a drink.”
+
+They did and when the drinks were downed, Chris laid the phony gold
+piece on the bar, received his change and with his crowd returned to his
+bar. An hour later he was still laughing to himself over the trick he’d
+played on Whiskers when his own sawed-off doors flapped open and
+Whiskers barged in, followed by his own mob of moochers. Whiskers
+ordered for the house and laid down the $20. Chris gulped and gave the
+change.
+
+That coin circulated in every store and saloon in Ballarat for more than
+a year. Everybody knew it was phony, but accepted it without question
+and came to regard it with something akin to affection. Then one day a
+gentleman in spats came along and the $20 gold piece left forever.
+
+Billy Heider, a slim, genial fellow who had been a hat salesman in a
+smart toggery shop in Los Angeles came not for gold but to escape
+alimony. His easy smile masked a stubbornness that nothing could
+conquer. “... she got a smart lawyer and dated the Judge,” Billy said.
+
+He hung his bench-made suit on a peg, slipped into overalls, cut off one
+sleeve of his tuxedo to cover a canteen, spread the rest on the floor
+beside his bed to step on in the morning and so—transition. Eventually
+he began to prospect, kept at it for 20 years; found nothing, but he
+beat alimony.
+
+Usually mines were “salted” in shaft or tunnel to separate the sucker
+from his money, but it remained for a Ballarat woman to find a simpler
+way.
+
+Michael Sherlock, known as Sparkplug, because of continual trouble with
+that feature of his automobile, gave me her formula: “She owned a claim
+in Pleasant Canyon that had a showing of gold. She wanted $10,000 for
+it. A rich auto dealer came along to look at it. He was worth at least
+$5,000,000. She told him to take his mining engineer and get his own
+samples and when he got back she’d have a chicken dinner waiting.
+
+“They got the samples, came down, parked the car in front of her house,
+got their bellies full of chicken and went back to the city. A couple of
+days later the millionaire was back. Couldn’t get his money into her
+hands quick enough. Word went out there would be work enough for all
+comers and we figured on boom times. But he couldn’t find ore to match
+her samples.”
+
+“What happened?” I asked.
+
+“While he was eating chicken dinner that night, her Indian hired man
+went out to his auto and switched samples.”
+
+I asked Sparkplug why he didn’t sue her.
+
+“If you had $5,000,000 would you want the whole dam’ state laughing at
+you?”
+
+
+Randsburg, which boomed in the early Eighties as a result of gold
+strikes in the Yellow Aster, the King Solomon, and later the Kelly
+silver mine, soon became one of the principal eastern gateways to the
+Panamint and to Death Valley by way of Granite Wells and Wingate Pass.
+
+A curious story of a man haunted by his conscience is that of William
+Dooley and told to me by Dr. Samuel Slocum, who had come to Randsburg
+from Arizona after making a fortune in gold.
+
+A howling blizzard had driven everyone from the streets and the campers
+in Fiddlers’ Gulch into Billy Hevron’s saloon. Dr. Slocum, lost in the
+blinding snow and stumbling along the street, felt with his hands for
+walls he couldn’t see, while a barroom noise guided him to the door.
+
+At the bar he saw William Paddock, mining engineer. “Bill, you’re the
+man I’m looking for. I can’t find anyone who can tell me how to get to
+Goler Canyon in Panamint Valley. You’ve been there and I want you to
+draw me a map.”
+
+Paddock, finishing a drink ordered one for Slocum and introduced him to
+a man at his side: “This is Mr. Dooley,” Paddock said, and the doctor
+saw a great hulk of a man with black whiskers, small eyes, and an uneasy
+look. Before a word was spoken Slocum sensed Dooley’s instant dislike of
+him.
+
+Slocum ordered a round of drinks. Dooley refused and walked to the
+farther end of the bar.
+
+Paddock followed Dooley after a moment, talked with him and returned to
+his drink. He said to Slocum: “I’m in a curious situation. I don’t know
+much about Dooley, but down in Mexico he saved my life. Now it’s my turn
+to save his. He just killed a man in Arizona and came here to hide out.
+I’m taking him to Goler Canyon soon as this blizzard is over. He thinks
+you are a deputy U. S. Marshal and claims that he has seen you before
+and that you are no doctor.”
+
+“He may have seen me in Arizona at Gold Hill,” Slocum said.
+
+“The best way I can help you,” Paddock continued, “is to sign the road
+as I go and after a day or two you can follow us.”
+
+On the day following Paddock’s departure Doctor Slocum set out. The next
+day he came upon a newly-made grave, outlined with stone. On a redwood
+board used for the marker was carved this inscription:
+
+ _“Here lies Bill Dooley who died by giving Wm. Paddock the dam’ lie.”_
+
+With no reason to shed tears, the Doctor following Paddock’s signs,
+reached Goler Canyon, made camp and knowing that Paddock intended to
+occupy a stone cabin farther up the gulch, he started up the trail. He’d
+gone only a short distance when he saw Paddock approaching, waving his
+arms in a signal for Slocum to go back. The Doctor stopped.
+
+When Paddock came down he said, “For God’s sake, Doc, get back to your
+camp. Dooley is behind that big boulder above us with a Winchester
+trained on you.”
+
+“Why, I thought he was dead....”
+
+“No,” Paddock smiled grimly. “He worked all night digging that grave.
+Said it would throw you off his trail. I can’t get it out of his head
+you’re a marshal.”
+
+Slocum had made a gruelling trip to free and open country and he had no
+intention of being driven out. “I’ll go up and talk to him,” he said.
+Paddock warned him that it would be useless and might be fatal, but
+Slocum insisted and they went up the trail, Paddock going in front to
+shield him.
+
+Dooley was outside the cabin with a rifle in the crook of his arm, his
+finger on the trigger.
+
+Slocum was unarmed. He calmly assured Dooley he was not an officer; that
+he had no intention of disclosing Dooley’s whereabouts, “But this is
+free country and I intend to stay.”
+
+Dooley’s reaction was a noncommittal grunt. However, violence was
+avoided. When the Doctor returned to his camp, Paddock decided it would
+be best to accompany him as a measure of safety. Explaining to Dooley
+that he would remain with the Doctor to inspect a claim, he remained as
+a body-guard for three days. On the fourth he went up to the stone cabin
+and discovered Dooley had loaded his wagon with all the camp equipment
+and supplies, including a green water keg and left for parts unknown.
+
+Just across the range was Hungry Bill’s country. A year or so afterward
+Doctor Slocum, crossing the mountains into Death Valley, stopped at
+Hungry Bill’s Six Spring Canyon Ranch and noticed a green cask. Hungry
+Bill said that he had found the keg floating on the ooze near Badwater.
+“Somewhere under that ooze,” Doctor Slocum said, “lies Bill Dooley, his
+team, his wagon, and its load.”
+
+
+An interesting character of this area was Toppy Johnson, who scouted for
+Senator George Hearst and later had charge of copper claims belonging to
+William Randolph Hearst, near Granite Wells.
+
+While there, Toppy employed Aunt Liza, a negro cook. Aunt Liza came from
+Randsburg with an enormous trunk. She was a good cook, but an awful
+thief and nearly everything Toppy owned except the furniture disappeared
+piece by piece. When his razor vanished he looked through the trunk and
+found the loot. He didn’t want to lose Aunt Liza, so he removed a few of
+the more needed things, leaving the rest to be recovered by instalments.
+Thereafter it was a game of losing and retrieving.
+
+As strange a coincidence as I’ve ever heard attended the end of Toppy
+Johnson. Sent to Mexico when Pancho Villa was overrunning the country,
+he fled to Mazatlan when Pancho announced he would shoot on sight both
+native and foreigners who were not in sympathy with his marauding.
+
+All boats were crowded with refugees, both native and alien, but Toppy
+was permitted to join the hundreds willing to sleep on deck. Toppy
+unwittingly chose a spot over the saloon where drunken celebrants soon
+began shooting at the ceiling.
+
+A shot penetrated the flooring of the craft’s deck and Toppy’s abdomen.
+An American physician sleeping alongside was awakened by Toppy’s groans,
+attended him, but saw there was no hope. The physician asked his name,
+the object being to notify the victim’s relatives.
+
+“If my doctor were only here,” Toppy moaned, “he could save me.”
+
+“Who is your doctor?”
+
+“Dr. Samuel Slocum, of Pasadena,” Toppy said, and died.
+
+The physician was Dr. Slocum’s nephew.
+
+Thirty-four miles south of Ballarat at the end of a narrow canyon
+leading from Wingate Pass road into Death Valley, one comes upon a
+breath-taking riot of color. Pink hills. Blue hills. Hills of dazzling
+white, mottled with black and green. Yellow hills. Maroon and jade
+hills.
+
+A gentleman of fine fancy and fluent tongue passed that way, learned
+that under the hills was a deposit of epsom salts. Then he went to
+Hollywood where salts met money. He talked convincingly of nature’s drug
+store. “Just sink a shovel into the ground and up comes two dollars’
+worth of medicine recommended by every doctor in the country. No
+educating the public. Everybody knows epsom salts.”
+
+There was no flaw in that argument and Hollywood dipped into its
+pockets. A mono rail was strung from Searles’ Lake over the Slate Range
+through Wingate Pass and up the slopes to the pink hills. There rose
+Epsom City. For awhile the balanced cars scooted along that gleaming
+rail, bearing salts to market—dreams of wealth to Hollywood.
+
+But the world had enough salts, Epsom City failed. Nothing is left to
+remind one of the incredible folly but a few boards and a pile of bones.
+The bones are those of wild burros slaughtered by vandals who in a
+project as inhuman as ever excited lust for money, went through the
+country and killed the helpless animals, to be sold to manufacturers of
+chicken and dog food.
+
+A singular character known as Dad Smith, who had come to California with
+John C. Fremont was one of the earliest settlers at Post Office Springs.
+Smith had been a scout with Kit Carson in the Apache wars in Arizona and
+returned to the lower Panamint in 1860, to hunt gold in Butte Valley,
+where, nearing 90 he dug a tunnel 100 feet in length. Found there
+delirious, with pneumonia, by Dr. Samuel Slocum, he was removed to the
+Doctor’s camp where Mrs. Slocum nursed him through his convalescence.
+When he recovered he decided to give Mrs. Slocum a token of his
+gratitude.
+
+At the time, Barstow and Daggett were the most convenient stations for
+prospectors in the southerly area. At Daggett they likkered at Mother
+Featherlegs’. At Barstow they bought at Judge Gooding’s store or at Aunt
+Hannah’s, and drank at Sloan and Hart’s saloon. Dad’s money, as was that
+of others, was left with them for safe keeping. So he walked every mile
+of a ten days’ round trip to get a box of chocolates for Mrs. Slocum. A
+little chore like that made no difference to Dad. He encountered a
+desert rain and arrived at the Slocum cabin drenched. They persuaded him
+to remain overnight and led him to a tent.
+
+Seeing that water dripped from Dad’s blankets, Dr. Slocum went for dry
+bedding. When he returned, Dad had his own bedding spread on the ground.
+“Here, Dad—take this dry bedding....”
+
+“Not on your life,” Dad said as he crawled into his own. “I’d catch
+cold, sure as hell.”
+
+Two noted athletes of the period went into the Panamint for a vacation.
+When they asked for a guide, they were told to get Dad, but after
+looking him over they decided he lacked stamina, but engaged him when
+they could find no one else. The route was over the Panamint into Death
+Valley and back through Redlands Canyon—a trip to test the hardiest.
+
+On the third day Dad returned alone. Asked about his companions, he
+grumbled: “They’re down and out. Now I’ve got to haul ’em in.”
+
+He took his burros, lashed the victims securely on the beasts and
+brought them in.
+
+Remembered by oldsters, was Archie McDermot, a big fellow of
+unbelievable strength who was an all-purpose employee of Dr. Slocum.
+
+While they were camped at Barstow one night, Archie went up town to pass
+a cheerful hour and during the course of the evening a brawl started and
+Archie suddenly found himself the object of a mass attack by five burly
+miners. Archie knocked them down as they came, threw them out and
+returned to his drinking. The constable went in to take Archie. Archie
+tossed him through the door. The officer didn’t want to kill him, and
+collecting a posse of four brawny helpers, tried again. Archie pitched
+them out.
+
+Being a friend of Slocum, the constable now went to see the Doctor.
+“Doc, can’t you come down and do something about Archie? Knowing how you
+need him, I don’t want to kill him....”
+
+Doctor Slocum went, discovered that Archie, after throwing everybody out
+of the place, had seized the long heavy bar, turned it on its side and
+was sitting on the edge with a bottle in each hand. Doctor Slocum
+regarded the wreckage and then Archie. “Good Lord, Archie, what have you
+done?”
+
+“Nothing, Doc,” Archie said. “Just having a nip. Take one on the
+house....”
+
+“What about this fight?”
+
+“Fight?” repeated Archie. “Oh, that—some fellows tried to start a little
+ruckus but I didn’t pay much attention to it.”
+
+But if Archie had no fear of a dozen live men, he was terrorized by a
+dead one.
+
+Doctor and Mrs. Slocum, with Archie, were leaving their camp in the
+Panamint. The thermometer under the canopy of the vehicle registered 135
+degrees—hot for an April day, even in Death Valley country. As they
+drove along, the Doctor noticed some clothing on a bush. “Seems
+strange,” he said. “Let’s look around.”
+
+Archie skirmished through the bushes. Presently he returned, his face
+white, horror in his eyes. He grabbed the wagon wheel, his quivering
+bulk shaking the heavily loaded vehicle. “For God’s sake, Doc. Go and
+look!”
+
+The Doctor saw a sight as pitiable as it is ever man’s lot to see—a
+young fellow dying from thirst on the desert. His protruding tongue
+split in the middle. Unable to speak, though retaining a spark of life.
+The fingers of both hands worn to stubs.
+
+Kneeling, Doctor Slocum asked the victim where he came from; where he
+wished to go. No sign came from the staring eyes. Finally the Doctor
+said, “We want to help you. We have water. We’re going to take you
+home.” At the mention of home, a feeble smile came, and two tears, the
+last two drops in that wasted body, rolled down his cheeks and dried in
+the desert sun and then he died. There was nothing to do but bury the
+body.
+
+“You’ll have to help me, Archie,” the Doctor said.
+
+A look of terror came into Archie’s eyes. “Doc,” he pleaded, “ask me
+anything but that....”
+
+The man who’d cleaned up Barstow, quailed in superstitious fear at the
+thought of touching the dead.
+
+They looked around for a place to dig a grave. But the country was
+covered with malpai and lava rock and they couldn’t dig in it. The
+Doctor wrapped the body in a piece of canvas and Mrs. Slocum aided in
+lifting it into the wagon. She drove the team while the Doctor and
+Archie walked along, looking for loose earth and finally found a spot.
+Archie dug the grave. The Doctor lowered the body and Archie with shut
+eyes, filled the grave.
+
+A press story of the finding brought a flood of letters from all parts
+of the country. Such stories always do. From mothers, wives,
+sweethearts—but none from men. It’s always the woman who cares.
+
+Such deaths are due to inexperience. This boy had no canteen. Just
+around the corner of a jutting hill was Lone Willow Spring.
+
+Though scarcely a vestige remains, there was once a town at Lone Willow.
+Saloons and an enormous dance hall lured the Bad Boys and there the
+trail ended for scores reported as missing men.
+
+Cyclone Wilson, a nephew of Shady Myrick who built a sizable export
+trade in gem stones, and for whom Myrick Springs is named, was taking a
+wagon load of Chinese coolies to work at Old Harmony. All Chinamen
+looked alike to Cyclone and he didn’t know that these were newcomers. It
+was his custom to discharge his passengers at the foot of a steep hill
+near Lone Willow and require them to walk to the top.
+
+As usual, upon reaching this grade he set his brakes and waited for the
+coolies to get out. None moved, then he ordered them out. The Chinamen
+sat in stony silence. He repeated the order with no result other than
+jabber among themselves. Angered, Cyclone reached for his long
+blacksnake whip. It had a “cracker” on the end of which was a buckshot.
+With unerring accuracy he aimed the whip at the nearest coolie and
+overboard he went. The others leaped out and drawing knives from their
+big loose sleeves, massed for assault.
+
+Cyclone reached for a pistol—always carried on the wagon seat, and
+started shooting. His toll was five Chinamen.
+
+The cause of the murders, it was later learned, was due entirely to the
+fact that none of the Chinamen had understood a word Cyclone had spoken.
+
+A Chinaman at Lone Willow, who spoke English made his countrymen bury
+the dead.
+
+
+Today Ballarat is a ghost town and soon every trace of it will be gone.
+Roofless walls lift like prayerful arms to gods that are deaf.
+
+In the late afternoon when the shadows of the Argus Range have crept
+across the valley, a few old timers come out of leaning dobes and stand
+bareheaded to look about. The afterglow of a sun is upon the peaks and
+the afterglow of dreams in their hearts. They people the empty streets
+with men long dead, some in unmarked graves in the little cemetery on
+the flat just beyond the town. Some on the trails, God only knows where.
+These dead they see pass in and out of the old saloons. These dead they
+hear again. Glasses tinkle, slippered feet dance again.
+
+Tomorrow? Their pale eyes lift to the canyons and though dimmed a
+little, they see one hundred billion dollars.
+
+
+What of Shoshone? It remains with changes of course. The shanties hauled
+from Greenwater have been hauled somewhere else. No longer do I step
+from my car as I have so often and call to those on the bench. “Move
+over, fellows” and hear their familiar greeting: “Where the hell _you_
+been?”
+
+Instead, I drive to an air conditioned cabin and stroll back to the
+former site of the bench, so long the social center. There I see a sign
+over a door which reads, “Crowbar” and I enter a dreamy cavern with
+dimmed, rosy lights, hear the music of ice against glass and refuse to
+believe the startling sight of an honest-to-goodness old timer tending
+bar in a clean white shirt.
+
+Likewise I balk at the white lines I walk between as I cross the asphalt
+road to the store.
+
+But above Shoshone the same blue skies stretch without end over a world
+apart, and under them are the same uncrowded trails; the same far
+horizons for the vagabond’s foot and the peace “which passeth all
+understanding.”
+
+
+
+
+                                 INDEX
+
+
+                                   A
+  Amargosa River, 96
+  American Potash and Chemical Co., 33
+  Archilette Spring, 95
+  Augerreberry, Pete, 58
+
+
+                                    B
+  Ballarat, 175
+  Ballarat Mines, production figures, 176
+  Beatty, Monte, 53, 77
+  Benson, Myra, 68, 133-134-135
+  Benson, Jack, 133-134-135
+  Bennett, Bellerin’ Teck, 23
+  Bennett, Charles, freighter, 31
+  Bennett’s Well, 21
+  Black Mountain, story of, 20, 60-61
+  Bodie, toughest of the Gold Towns, 74
+  Borax, discovery of, 26
+  Bradbury Well, 76
+  Bowers, Sandy, gets a fortune for a board bill, 74
+  Brannan, Sam, Mormon leader, 95
+  Brandt, “Arkansas” Ben, 71, 83, 138
+  Breyfogle, Jacob; stories of, 154
+  Brown, Charles, Deputy Sheriff at Greenwater; store at Shoshone;
+          road builder, supervisor, superintendent of Lila C. Mine
+          at Dale; elected to senate; Chap. XV, 102
+  Brown (nee Fairbanks) Stella, 69, 71, 104-105, 107, 116, 135
+  Brougher Wils, at Tonopah, 49
+  Bruce, Jimmy, private graveyard, 168
+  Bullfrog Mine, discovered, 53-54-55
+  Butler, James, discoverer of Tonopah silver, 48-49-50, 59
+  Bulette, Julia, famed madam of Virginia City, 74
+
+
+                                    C
+  Cahill, Washington, Borax Co. official, 35-36
+  Calico Mountains, 15
+  Calico, stories of, 15, 16
+  Carrillo, Jose Antonio, 97
+  Carson, Kit, guide and scout in Shoshone country, 20, 93-94-95
+  Casey, John “Cranky,” noted desert character, 136, 137-138
+  Cave Spring, 134
+  Cazaurang, Jean, wealthy miser, death of, 100-101
+  China Ranch, stories of, 80, 94
+  Clark, W. A., 60
+  Clark, “Patsy,” 60
+  Coleman, W. T., 27-28, 30
+  Comstock, “Pancake,” famous lode named for; buys a woman; suicide,
+          48, 74
+  Corcoran, “Wild Bill,” famous prospector; death of, 58, 177
+  Counterfeit gold piece, 179-180
+  Cross, Ed, partner and co-discoverer of Bullfrog Mine, 53
+
+
+                                    D
+  Dayton, James, superintendent Furnace Creek Ranch, death of,
+          35-36, 122
+  Dante’s View, 151
+  Davis, Buford, buys Noonday Mine; death of, 158
+  Death Valley, cause of; history of, geology, temperatures; first
+          settlers, 19
+  Decker, Judge, convivial Ballarat Justice of Peace, murdered, 62
+  Delameter, John, early freighter, 156
+  Diamond Tooth Lil, glamorous madam, 62-63
+  Dooley, William, bad man, 181-182-183
+  Driscoll, Dan, partner of Shorty Harris, 91, 120
+  Dublin Gulch, 69
+  Dumont, Eleanor, (Madame Moustache), charmer of the Forty Niners,
+          74
+
+
+                                    E
+  Eichbaum, Bob, toll road, 21
+  Egbert, Adrian, at Cave Spring, 134
+  Epsom City, salts deposit; mono rail, 184
+
+
+                                    F
+  Fairbanks, Ralph Jacobus, at Ash Meadows; at Greenwater; at
+          Shoshone, stories of; death; Ch. XVI, 104-105, 108,
+          110-111
+  Fairbanks, Celestia Abigail, 105
+  Fennimore, James, “Old Virginny”; named Virginia City; swapped
+          Ophir Mine for blind pony, 74
+  Flake, Sam, old timer, poker student, death, 68, 78
+  Fremont, John C., 93
+  French, Dr. Darwin, seeks Lost Gunsight, names Darwin Falls and
+          town of, 21
+  Funston, General Frederick, identifies and names Death Valley
+          flora, 24
+
+
+                                    G
+  Gayhart, W. C., assayer, part owner of Tonopah Discovery Mine,
+          49-50
+  George, “Rocky Mountain,” 76
+  Godey, Alex, Fremont scout, fights Indians at Resting Springs, 94
+  Goldfield, named, 50
+  Goodwin, Ray, park official, 147, 149
+  Gorsline, Joe, Ballarat Judge, 177-178
+  Gower, Harry, Borax Co. official, mgr. Furnace Creek Ranch, 41
+  Grandpa Springs, hole-in for old time prospectors, 50
+  Grantham, Louise, girl prospector, 139
+  Gray, Fred, Ballarat prospector, 116
+  Gray, W. B., 77
+  Greenwater, copper strike, stories of, 60, 63
+  Gunsight Mine, 21-22, 157-158
+
+
+                                    H
+  “Happy Bandits” (Small and McDonald), 164-165, 167-168
+  Harris, Frank “Shorty,” Ch. XVII, 113
+  Harrisburg, scene of gold strike, 57, 114
+  Harmon, Pete, misses millions, 117
+  Hellgate Pass, 64
+  Heider, Billy, flees alimony, 180
+  Heinze, August, Copper King, 60
+  Henderson, W. T., names Telescope Peak, kills Joaquin Murietta,
+          famous bandit, and pickles head; sees victim’s ghost,
+          164-165
+  Hilton, Frank, finds body of James Dayton, 36
+  Hoagland George, burial of, 72-73
+  Holmes, Helen, story of thriller, “Perils of Pauline,” 127
+  Hungry Hattie, Ballarat character, 119
+  Huhn, Ernest (Siberian Red), diligent prospector, 68
+  Hungry Bill, Panamint chief, 87
+  Hunt, Capt. Jefferson, Mormon guide; prominent in California
+          culture, 21
+
+
+                                    I
+  Ickes, Harold, visits Shoshone, 149-150
+  Indians of the desert, conflicting opinions of, Ch. VII, 43
+  Indian George Hansen, owner of Indian Ranch, discovered silver at
+          Panamint City, 154, 155, 171-172-173
+  Ishmael, George, 152
+
+
+                                    J
+  Johnnie Mine, 90
+  Johnson, Albert, owner and builder of Scotty’s Castle, 133
+  Johnson, Bob, tamps friend’s grave, 72-73
+  Johnson, Toppy, supt. of desert mine of W. R. Hearst, 183
+  Jones, Herman, discovered Red Wing Mine, road builder, 72, 142
+  Jones, J. P., Nev. silver king at Panamint city, 23, 166, 170
+  Johnny-Behind-the-Gun, 178-179
+
+
+                                    K
+  Kellogg, Lois, owner of Manse Ranch, 101
+  Kempfer, Don, mining engineer, official of Sierra Talc. Co., 158
+
+
+                                    L
+  Lee, Philander, owner of Resting Springs Ranch, 97
+  Lee, Cub, built first house at Shoshone, slays wife and son, 98
+  Lee, John D., established Lee’s Ferry; executed for massacre of
+          emigrants at Mountain Meadows, 90
+  Lee, “Shoemaker,” 98
+  Legend of Swamper Ike, 173-174
+  Le Moyne, Jean, recipe for coffee, story of mine, death, 176-177
+  Lone Willow, murders at, 186
+  Longstreet, Jack, Ash Meadows bad man, 90
+  Lost Mines, all of Ch. XXII, 154-163
+
+
+                                    M
+  Main, Eddie, 69, 78
+  McDermot, Archie, Strong Man, 185
+  McGarn, “Whitey Bill,” 70, 78, 138
+  Manly, William Lewis, 23, 157, 161
+  Manse Ranch, 155
+  Metbury Spring, first name of Shoshone, 72
+  Myers, Al, discoverer of Gold Field, 50
+  Modine, Dan, deputy sheriff, early owner of China Ranch, 63, 68,
+          84
+  Montgomery, Bob, owner of Montgomery Shoshone Mine, buys Skidoo
+          discovery claim on sight, 54-56
+  Murray, Billy, saves John S. Cook Bank and Goldfield from “run,”
+          51
+  Murietta, Joaquin, 95
+  Myrick, Shady, exports gem stones, 186
+
+
+                                    N
+  Nadeau, Remi, genius of transportation, 169
+  Nagle, Dave, 166
+  Naylor, George, sheriff, treasurer, supervisor of Inyo Co., 102
+  Nels, Dobe Charlie, at Bodie; at Shoshone, 74-75
+  Noble, Levi, geologist, 39-40-41
+
+
+                                    O
+  Oakes, Sir Harry; in Alaska; at Greenwater; at Shoshone; makes
+          strike in Canada; builds palace at Niagara Falls; knighted
+          by King George V; slain by son-in-law, it is said—a
+          renegade French count, in Bahamas, 105, 111-112
+  Oddie, Tasker, mining tycoon, 49-50, 60
+  Owens Valley, rape of, 147-148
+
+
+                                    P
+  Pacific Coast Borax Co., organized, 28-29
+  Pahrump Ranch, 23
+  Panamint City, 166-167-168
+  Panamint Tom, story of, 23, 109
+  Perry, J. W. S., supt. Borax Co., designer of 20 mule team wagons,
+          31
+  Pietsch, Henry, shot Ballarat judge, 62
+  Plato, Joe, on the Comstock Lode, 76
+  Post Office Spring, early army post, 175
+
+
+                                    R
+  Radcliffe Mine, 175
+  Raines, E. P., genial crook, 165-166
+  Randsburg, gold discovered at, 181
+  Rasor, Clarence, Borax Co. official, 151
+  Resting Springs, named by Mormons, 96
+  Rich, Charles, Mormon pioneer, 96
+  Rickard, sports promoter, 51
+  “Rocky Mountain” George, prospector, 76, 77
+  Rogers, John, Bennett-Arcane party, 21
+  Rosie, squaw, love life of, 88
+  Ryan, Joe, desert philosopher, 70-71, 73, 82
+  Rhyolite, discovery of gold, 54-55
+
+
+                                    S
+  Saratoga Springs, 93
+  Schwab, Charles M., at Rhyolite; at Greenwater, 55, 60
+  Scott, Bob, discoverer of Confidence Mine, 91
+  Scott, Mary, squaw, 90
+  Scott, Walter, “Death Valley Scotty,” 69, Ch. XIX, 130
+  Scrugham, James, Governor and U.S. Senator of Nevada, 77
+  Searles, John, 32-33, 159
+  Sherlock, Michael, “Sparkplug,” 180
+  Skidoo, gold strike, 55-56
+  Slim, Death Valley, bad man, 102-103
+  Slim, Jackass, Ch. II, 20; Ch. XI, 64-65
+  Slocum, Dr. Samuel, 181-186
+  Smith, Francis M. (“Borax Smith”), 29-33, 38
+  Smith, “Dad,” Old Man of the Mountains; came with Kit Carson, 184
+  Smith, Pegleg, 97-98-99
+  Snake House, 78
+  Sorrells, Maury, 138
+  Stewart, Wm. R., Nevada Senator, mines at Panamint City, 23, 170
+  Stiles, Ed, first driver of 20 mule team, 31, 35, 37
+  Stump Springs, 23
+  Stovepipe Wells, 21
+
+
+                                    T
+  Teck, Bellowin’, 23
+  Tecopa Cap, Indian Chief, 78, 79
+  Tecopa Hot Spring, 79
+  Tecopa, John, discoverer of Johnnie Mine, 90
+  Telescope Peak, 22, 93, 139
+  Temperature in Death Valley, 41, 42
+  Tonopah, discovery of silver, 50, 51
+  Towne’s Pass, named, 21
+  Trona, 33
+  Twenty-mule team, first driver, design of, 31
+  Tule Hole, story of, 35, 36-37
+
+
+                                    V
+  Vasquez, Tiburcio, bandit terror, 169
+  Volmer, Joe, 141
+
+
+                                    W
+  Wagons, 20 mule team, design of, 31
+  Wamack, Bob, at Confidence Mine, 91
+  Weed, Tom, noted Indian, death of, 89-90
+  Wichts, Chris, noted Ballarat character, story of, 61, 179
+  Williams, George, 142
+  Williams, Bill, preacher and plunderer, 96-97
+  Wilson, Cyclone, massacre of Chinamen at Lone Willow, 186, 187
+  Wingfield, George, famous gambler, luck of, 51
+  Winters, Aaron and Rosie, discovered borax in Death Valley, 26
+  Wolfskill, 92
+
+
+                                    Y
+  Younger, Tillie, member of Jesse James guerrillas, dies at
+          Shoshone, 73
+  Yundt, John, Lee and Sam, owners of Manse Ranch, 99-100
+
+
+
+
+                              _The Author_
+
+
+Nearly every newspaperman looks forward to the time when he can get away
+from the pressure of his journalistic job and retire to a little cottage
+by the sea, or a cabin in the mountains, and write a book.
+
+The only difference between William Caruthers—Bill, to his friends—and a
+majority of the others is that he did write his book on the spot,
+preserved it and after retiring to his orange grove near Ontario,
+California he got around to the job of revision, which resulted in these
+pages.
+
+Born on the banks of the Cumberland River in Tennessee, Caruthers’
+career as a journalist began when he became editor of the local weekly
+paper at the age of 16. He took the job, he explains, because no one
+else wanted it.
+
+His family wanted him to be a lawyer, and in compliance with their
+wishes he returned to school and was admitted to the bar in Tennessee
+when he was 19. But he wanted to be a newspaperman, and vowed that when
+he won his first $2,000 fee he would quit law. Successful as a young
+lawyer, the time soon came when he won a tough case against a big
+insurance company—and that was his chance. He closed his law office
+forever.
+
+For a time he was editor of Illustrated Youth and Age, the largest
+monthly in the South. He wrote feature articles for the Nashville
+American, Nashville Banner, the old New York World, the Christian
+Science Monitor, fiction for Collier’s Weekly and other important
+magazines. His writings have appeared in most Western magazines.
+
+After coming to California he first went to work on the Los Angeles
+Examiner, quitting that job to become a publisher and his little
+magazine, _The Bystander_ gained nationwide circulation. While editing
+this magazine he became editor of Los Angeles’ first theatrical
+magazine, _The Rounder_, which was a “must” on the list of early movie
+stars and soon discovered that the most lucrative field for a journalist
+was in ghost writing. As a “ghost” he addressed big political
+conventions, assemblies of governors and mayors and in one instance, a
+jury as the prosecutor. One eastern industrialist paid him a fabulous
+fee when the address Caruthers wrote for him brought a great ovation.
+
+Finally his physician warned him to slow down. It was then—in 1926—that
+he came to the desert, and, during the intervening 25 years, has spent
+much of his time in the Death Valley region. He has witnessed the
+transition of Death Valley from a prospector’s hunting ground to a mecca
+for winter tourists. This is a book of the old days in Death Valley.
+
+
+
+
+                          Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
+  is public-domain in the country of publication.
+
+—Corrected a few palpable typos.
+
+—Added page numbers to plates (in roman numerals).
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Loafing Along Death Valley Trails, by William Caruthers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Loafing Along Death Valley Trails
+       A Personal Narrative of People and Places
+
+Author: William Caruthers
+
+Release Date: April 30, 2016 [EBook #51899]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOAFING ALONG DEATH VALLEY TRAILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             LOAFING ALONG
+                          DEATH VALLEY TRAILS
+
+
+                          By WILLIAM CARUTHERS
+
+               A Personal Narrative of People and Places
+
+                  COPYRIGHT 1951 BY WILLIAM CARUTHERS
+
+        Printed in the U.S.A. by P-B Press, Inc., Pomona, Calif.
+                Published by Death Valley Publishing Co.
+                          Ontario, California
+
+
+
+
+                               DEDICATION
+
+
+To one who, without complaint or previous experience with desert
+hardships, shared with me the difficult and often dangerous adventures
+in part recorded in this book, which but for her persistent urging,
+would never have reached the printed page. She is, of course, my
+wife--with me in a sense far broader than the words imply:
+_always--always_.
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+  Dedication                                                            5
+  This Book                                                             9
+  I A Foretaste of Things to Come                                      11
+  II What Caused Death Valley                                          19
+  III Aaron and Rosie Winters                                          25
+  IV John Searles and His Lake of Ooze                                 30
+  V But Where Was God?                                                 35
+  VI Death Valley Geology                                              39
+  VII Indians of the Area                                              43
+  VIII Desert Gold. Too Many Fractions                                 48
+  IX Romance Strikes the Parson                                        53
+  X Greenwater--Last of the Boom Towns                                 60
+  XI The Amargosa Country                                              64
+  XII A Hovel That Ought To Be a Shrine                                82
+  XIII Sex in Death Valley Country                                     87
+  XIV Shoshone Country. Resting Springs                                92
+  XV The Story of Charles Brown                                       102
+  XVI Long Man, Short Man                                             109
+  XVII Shorty Frank Harris                                            113
+  XVIII A Million Dollar Poker Game                                   125
+  XIX Death Valley Scotty                                             130
+  XX Odd But Interesting Characters                                   136
+  XXI Roads. Cracker Box Signs                                        144
+  XXII Lost Mines. The Breyfogle and Others                           154
+  XXIII Panamint City. Genial Crooks                                  164
+  XXIV Indian George. Legend of the Panamint                          171
+  XXV Ballarat. Ghost Town                                            175
+  Index                                                               189
+
+
+
+
+                               THIS BOOK
+
+
+This book is a personal narrative of people and places in Panamint
+Valley, the Amargosa Desert, and the Big Sink at the bottom of America.
+Most of the places which excited a gold-crazed world in the early part
+of the century are now no more, or are going back to sage. Of the actors
+who made the history of the period, few remain.
+
+It was the writer's good fortune that many of these men were his
+friends. Some were or would become tycoons of mining or industry. Some
+would lucklessly follow jackasses all their lives, to find no gold but
+perhaps a finer treasure--a rainbow in the sky that would never fade.
+
+It is the romance, the comedy, the often stark tragedy these men left
+along the trail which you will find in the pages that follow.
+
+Necessarily the history of the region, often dull, is given first
+because it gives a clearer picture of the background and second, because
+that history is little known, being buried in the generally unread
+diaries of John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, Lt. Brewerton, Jedediah Smith,
+and the stories of early Mormon explorers.
+
+It is interesting to note that a map popular with adventurers of
+Fremont's time could list only six states west of the Mississippi River.
+These were Texas, Indian Territory, Missouri, Oregon, and Mexico's two
+possessions--New Mexico and Upper California. There was no Idaho, Utah,
+Nevada, Arizona, Washington, or either of the Dakotas. No Kansas. No
+Nebraska.
+
+Sources of material are given in the text and though careful research
+was made, it should be understood that the history of Death Valley
+country is argumentative and bold indeed is one who says, "Here are the
+facts."
+
+With something more than mere formality, the writer wishes to thank
+those mentioned below:
+
+My longtime friend, Senator Charles Brown of Shoshone who has often
+given valuable time to make available research material which otherwise
+would have been almost impossible to obtain. Of more value, have been
+his personal recollections of Greenwater, Goldfield, and Tonopah, in all
+of which places he had lived in their hectic days.
+
+Mrs. Charles Brown, daughter of the noted pioneer, Ralph Jacobus (Dad)
+Fairbanks and her sister, Mrs. Bettie Lisle, of Baker, California. The
+voluminous scrapbooks of both, including one of their mother, Celestia
+Abigail Fairbanks, all containing information of priceless value were
+always at my disposal while preparing the manuscript.
+
+Dad Fairbanks, innumerable times my host, was a walking encyclopedia of
+men and events.
+
+One depository of source material deserves special mention. Nailed to
+the wall of Shorty Harris' Ballarat cabin was a box two feet wide, four
+feet long, with four shelves. The box served as a cupboard and its
+calico curtains operated on a drawstring. On the top shelf, Shorty would
+toss any letter, clipping, record of mine production, map, or bulletin
+that the mails had brought, visitors had given, or friends had sent. And
+there they gathered the dust of years.
+
+Wishing to locate the address of Peter B. Kyne, author of The Parson of
+Panamint, whose host Shorty had been, I removed these documents and
+discovered that the catch-all shelf was a veritable treasure of
+little-known facts about the Panamint of earlier days.
+
+There were maps, reports of geologic surveys, and bulletins now out of
+print; newspapers of the early years and scores of letters with valuable
+material bearing the names of men internationally known.
+
+It is with a sense of futility that I attempt to express my indebtedness
+to my wife, who with a patience I cannot comprehend, kept me searching
+for the facts whenever and wherever the facts were to be found; typing
+and re-typing the manuscript in its entirety many times to make it, if
+possible, a worthwhile book.
+
+                                  Ontario, California, December 22, 1950
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter I
+                     A Foretaste of Things to Come
+
+
+In the newspaper office where the writer worked, was a constant parade
+of adventurers. Talented press agents; promoters; moguls of mining and
+prospectors who, having struck it rich, now lived grandly in palatial
+homes, luxurious hotels or impressive clubs. In their wake, of course,
+was an engaging breed of liars, and an occasional adventuress who by
+luck or love had left a boom town crib to live thereafter "in marble
+halls with vassals" at her command. All brought arresting yarns of Death
+Valley.
+
+For 76 years this Big Sink at the bottom of America had been a land of
+mystery and romantic legend, but there had been little travel through it
+since the white man's first crossing. "I would have starved to death on
+tourists' trade," said the pioneer Ralph (Dad) Fairbanks.
+
+More than 3,000,000 people lived within a day's journey in 1925, but
+excepting a few, who lived in bordering villages and settlements, those
+who had actually been in Death Valley could be counted on one's fingers
+and toes. The reasons were practical. It was the hottest region in
+America, with few water holes and these far apart. There were no
+roads--only makeshift trails left by the wagons that had hauled borax in
+the Eighties. Now they were little more than twisting scars through
+brush, over dry washes and dunes, though listed on the maps as roads.
+For the novice it was a foolhardy gamble with death. "There are easier
+ways of committing suicide," a seasoned desert man advised.
+
+I had been up and down the world more perhaps than the average person
+and this seemed to be a challenge to one with a vagabond's foot and a
+passion for remote places. So one day I set out for Death Valley.
+
+At the last outpost of civilization, a two-cabin resort, the sign over a
+sand-blasted, false-fronted building stressed: "Free Information.
+Cabins. Eats. Gas. Oil. Refreshments."
+
+Needing all these items, I parked my car and walked into a foretaste of
+things-to-come. The owner, a big, genial fellow, was behind the counter
+using his teeth to remove the cork from a bottle labeled "Bourbon"--a
+task he deftly accomplished by twisting on the bottle instead of the
+cork. "I want a cabin for the night," I told him, "and when you have
+time, all the free information I can get."
+
+"You've come to headquarters," he beamed as he set the bottle on the
+table, glanced at me, then at the liquor and added: "Don't know your
+drinking sentiments but if you'd like to wet your whistle, take one on
+the house."
+
+While he was getting glasses from a cabinet behind the counter, a
+slender, wiry man with baked skin, coal-black eyes and hair came through
+a rear door, removed a knapsack strapped across his shoulders and set it
+in the farthest corner of the room. Two or three books rolled out and
+were replaced only after he had wiped them carefully with a red bandana
+kerchief. A sweat-stained khaki shirt and faded blue overalls did not
+affect an impression he gave of some outstanding quality. It may have
+been the air of self assurance, the calm of his keen eyes or the majesty
+of his stride as he crossed the floor.
+
+My host glanced at the newcomer and set another glass on the table,
+"You're in luck," he said to me. "Here comes a man who can tell you
+anything you want to know about this country." A moment later the
+newcomer was introduced as "Blackie."
+
+"Whatever Blackie tells you is gospel. Knows every trail man or beast
+ever made in that hell-hole, from one end to the other. Ain't that
+right, Blackie?"
+
+Without answering, Blackie focused an eye on the bottle, picked it up,
+shook it, watched the beads a moment. "Bourbon hell ... just plain
+tongue oil."
+
+After the drink my host showed me to one of the cabins--a small, boxlike
+structure. Opening the door he waved me in. "One fellow said he couldn't
+whip a cat in this cabin, but you haven't got a cat." He set my suitcase
+on a sagging bed, brought in a bucket of water, put a clean towel on the
+roller and wiped the dust from a water glass with two big fingers. "When
+you get settled come down and loaf with us. Just call me Bill. Calico
+Bill, I'm known as. Came up here from the Calico Mountains."
+
+"Just one question," I said. "Don't you get lonesome in all this
+desolation?"
+
+"Lonesome? Mister, there's something going on every minute. You'd be
+surprised. Like what happened this morning. Did you meet a truck on your
+way up, with a husky young driver and a girl in a skimpy dress?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "At a gas station a hundred miles back, and the girl was
+a breath-taker."
+
+"You can say that again," Bill grinned. "Prettiest gal I ever saw--bar
+none. She's just turned eighteen. Married to a fellow fifty-five if he's
+a day. He owns a truck and hauls for a mine near here at so much a load.
+Jealous sort. Won't let her out of his sight. You can't blame a young
+fellow for looking at a pretty girl. But this brute is so crazy jealous
+he took to locking her up in his cabin while he was at work. Fact is,
+she's a nice clean kid and if I'd known about it, I'd have chased him
+off. I reckon she was too ashamed to tell anybody.
+
+"Of course the young fellows found it out and just to worry him, two or
+three of 'em came over here to play a prank on him and a hell of a prank
+it was. They made a lot of tracks around his cabin doors and windows. He
+saw the tracks and figured she'd been stepping out on him. So instead of
+locking her in as usual, he began to take her to work with him so he
+could keep his eyes on her.
+
+"Yesterday it happened. His truck broke down and this morning he left
+early to get parts, but he was smart enough to take her shoes with him.
+Then he nailed the doors and windows from the outside. Soon as he was
+out of hearing, somehow she busted out and came down to my store
+barefooted and asked me if I knew of any way she could get a ride out.
+'I'm leaving, if I have to walk,' she says. Then she told me her story.
+He'd bought her back in Oklahoma for $500. She is one of ten children.
+Her folks didn't have enough to feed 'em all. This old guy, who lived in
+their neighborhood and had money, talked her parents into the deal. 'I
+just couldn't see my little sisters go hungry,' she said, and like a
+fool she married him.
+
+"I reckon the Lord was with her. We see about three outside trucks a
+year around here, but I'd no sooner fixed her up with a pair of shoes
+before one pulls up for gas. I asked the driver if he'd give her a ride
+to Barstow. He took just one look. 'I sure will,' he says and off they
+went.
+
+"You see what I mean," Bill said, concluding his story. "Things like
+that. Of course we don't watch no parades but we also don't get pushed
+around and run over and tromped on."
+
+In the last twelve words Bill expressed what hundreds have failed to
+explain in pages of flowered phrase--the appeal of the desert.
+
+Soon I was back at the store. Bill and Blackie, over a new bottle were
+swapping memories of noted desert characters who had highlighted the
+towns and camps from Tonopah to the last hell-roarer. The great, the
+humble, the odd and eccentric. Through their conversation ran such names
+as Fireball Fan; Mike Lane; Mother Featherlegs; Shorty Harris; Tiger
+Lil; Hungry Hattie; Cranky Casey; Johnny-Behind-the-Gun; Dad Fairbanks;
+Fraction Jack Stewart; the Indian, Hungry Bill; and innumerable Slims
+and Shortys featured in yarns of the wasteland.
+
+Blackie's chief interest in life, Bill told me was books. "About all he
+does is read. Doesn't have to work. Of course, like everybody in this
+country, he's always going to find $2,000,000,000 this week or next."
+
+Though only incidental, history was brought into their conversation when
+Bill, giving me "free information" as his sign announced, told me I
+would be able to see the place where Manly crossed the Panamint.
+
+"Manly never knew where he crossed," Blackie said. "He tried to tell
+about it 40 years afterward and all he did was to start an argument
+that's going on yet. That's why I say you can write the known facts
+about Death Valley history on a postage stamp with the end of your
+thumb."
+
+The tongue oil loosened Calico Bill's story of Indian George and his
+trained mountain sheep. "George had the right idea about gold. Find it,
+then take it out as needed. One time an artist came to George's ranch
+and made a picture of the ram. When he had finished it he stepped behind
+his easel and was watching George eat a raw gopher snake when the goat
+came up. Rams are jealous and mistaking the picture for a rival, he
+charged like a thunderbolt.
+
+"It didn't hurt the picture, but knocked the painter and George through
+both walls of George's shanty. George picked himself up. 'Heap good
+picture. Me want.' The fellow gave it to him and for months George would
+tease that goat with the picture. One day he left it on a boulder while
+he went for his horse. When he got back, the boulder was split wide open
+and the picture was on top of a tree 50 feet away.
+
+"Somebody told George about a steer in the Chicago packing house which
+led other steers to the slaughter pen and it gave George an idea. One
+day I found him and his goat in a Panamint canyon and asked why he
+brought the goat along. 'Me broke. Need gold.' Since he didn't have
+pick, shovel, or dynamite, I asked how he expected to get gold.
+
+"'Pick, shovel heap work,' George said. 'Dynamite maybe kill. Sheep
+better. Me show you.' He told me to move to a safe place and after
+scattering some grain around for the goat, George scaled the boulder. It
+was big as a house. A moment later I saw him unroll the picture and with
+strings attached, let it rest on one corner of the big rock. Then
+holding the strings, he disappeared into his blind higher up. Suddenly
+he made a hissing noise. The Big Horn stiffened, saw the picture,
+lowered his head and never in my life have I seen such a crash. Dust
+filled the air and fragments fell for 10 minutes. When I went over
+George was gathering nuggets big as goose eggs. 'White man heap dam'
+fool,' he grunted. 'Wants too much gold all same time. Maybe lose. Maybe
+somebody steal. No can steal boulder.'"
+
+The "tongue oil" had been disposed of when Blackie suggested that we
+step over to his place, a short distance around the point of a hill.
+"Plenty more there."
+
+Bill had told me that as a penniless youngster Blackie had walked up
+Odessa Canyon one afternoon. Within three days he was rated as a
+millionaire. Within three months he was broke again. Later Blackie told
+me, "That's somebody's dream. I got about $200,000 and decided I
+belonged up in the Big Banker group. They welcomed me and skinned me out
+of my money in no time."
+
+It was Blackie who proved to my satisfaction that money has only a minor
+relation to happiness. His house was part dobe, part white tufa blocks.
+On his table was a student's lamp, a pipe, and can of tobacco. A book
+held open by a hand axe. Other books were shelved along the wall. He had
+an incongruous walnut cabinet with leaded glass doors. Inside, a
+well-filled decanter and a dozen whiskey glasses and a pleasant aroma of
+bourbon came from a keg covered with a gunny sack and set on a stool in
+the corner.
+
+"This country's hard on the throat," he explained.
+
+Blackie's kingdom seemed to have extended from the morning star to the
+setting sun. He had been in the Yukon, in New Zealand, South Africa, and
+the Argentine. Gold, hemp, sugar, and ships had tossed fortunes at him
+which were promptly lost or spent.
+
+For a man who had found compensation for such luck, there is no defeat.
+Certainly his philosophy seemed to meet his needs and that is the
+function of philosophy.
+
+It was cool in the late evening and he made a fire, chucked one end of
+an eight-foot log into the stove and put a chair under the protruding
+end. Bill asked why he didn't cut the log. "Listen," Blackie said,
+"you're one of 100 million reasons why this country is misgoverned. Why
+should I sweat over that log when a fire will do the job?... That book?
+Just some fellow's plan for a perfect world. I hope I'll not be around
+when they have it.
+
+"The town of Calico? It was a live one. When John McBryde and Lowery
+Silver discovered the white metal there, a lot of us desert rats got in
+the big money. In the first seven years of the Eighties it was bonanza
+and in the eighth the town was dead."
+
+But the stories of fortunes made in Mule and Odessa Canyons were of less
+importance to him than a habit of the town judge. "Chewed tobacco all
+the time and swallowed the juice, 'If a fellow's guts can't stand it,'
+he would say, 'he ought to quit,' and he'd clap a fine on anybody who
+spat in his court.
+
+"Never knew Jack Dent, did you? Englishman. Now there was a drinking
+man. Said his only ambition was to die drunk. One pay day he got so
+cockeyed he couldn't stand, so his pals laid him on a pool table and
+went on with their drinking. Every time they ordered, Jack hollered for
+his and somebody would take it over and pour it down him. 'Keep 'em
+comin',' he says. 'If I doze off, just pry my jaws open and pour it
+down.'
+
+"The boys took him at his word. Every time they drank, they took a drink
+to Jack. When the last round came they took Jack a big one. They tried
+to pry his lips open but the lips didn't give. Jack Dent's funeral was
+the biggest ever held in the town.
+
+"Bill was telling you I made a million there, and every now and then I
+hear of somebody telling somebody else I made a million in Africa. And
+another in the Yukon. The truth is, what little I've got came out of a
+hole in a whiskey barrel instead of a mine shaft.
+
+"A few years back a strike was made down in the Avawatz that started a
+baby gold rush. I joined it. A fellow named Gypsum came in with a barrel
+of whiskey, thinking there'd be a town, but it didn't turn out that way.
+Gypsum had no trouble disposing of his liquor and stayed around to do a
+little prospecting. One day when I was starting for Johannesburg, he
+asked me to deliver a message to a bartender there. Gypsum had a meat
+cleaver in his hand and was sharpening it on a butcher's steel to cut up
+a mountain sheep he'd killed.
+
+"'Just ask for Klondike and tell him to send my stuff. He'll understand.
+Tell him if he doesn't send it, I'm coming after it.'
+
+"I didn't know at the time that Gypsum had killed three men in honest
+combat and that one of them had been dispatched with a meat cleaver.
+
+"I delivered the message verbatim. Klondike looked a bit worried.
+'What's Gypsum doing?' he asked. 'When I left,' I said, 'he was
+sharpening a meat cleaver.' Klondike turned white. 'I'll have it ready
+before you go.'
+
+"When I called later, he told me he'd put Gypsum's stuff in the back of
+my car. When I got back to camp and Gypsum came to my tent to ask about
+it, I told him to get it out of the car, which was parked a few feet
+away. Gypsum went for it and in a moment I heard him cussing. I looked
+out and he was trying to shoulder a heavy sack. Before I could get out
+to help him, the sack got away from him and burst at his feet. The
+ground was covered with nickles, dimes, quarters, halves. 'There's
+another sack.' Gypsum said. 'The son of a bitch has sent me $2500 in
+chicken feed. Just for spite.'
+
+"Because it was a nuisance, Gypsum loaned it to the fellows about, all
+of whom were his friends. They didn't want it but took it just to
+accommodate Gypsum. There was nothing to spend it for. Somebody started
+a poker game and I let 'em use my tent because it was the largest. I
+rigged up a table by sawing Gypsum's whiskey barrel in two and nailing
+planks over the open end. Every night after supper they started playing.
+I furnished light and likker and usually I set out grub. It didn't cost
+much but somebody suggested that in order to reimburse me, two bits
+should be taken out of every jackpot. A hole was slit in the top. It was
+a fast game and the stakes high. It ran for weeks every evening and the
+Saturday night session ended Monday morning.
+
+"Of course some were soon broke and they began to borrow from one
+another. Finally everybody was broke and all the money was in my kitty.
+I took the top off the barrel and loaned it to the players, taking
+I.O.U.'s, I had to take the top off a dozen times and when it was
+finally decided there was no pay dirt in the Avawatz, I had a sack full
+of I.O.U.'s.
+
+"Once I tried to figure out how many times that $2500 was loaned, but I
+gave up. I learned though, why these bankers pick up a pencil and start
+figuring the minute you start talking. They are on the right end of the
+pencil."
+
+Early the next morning while Bill was servicing my car for the trip
+ahead, with some tactful mention of handy gadgets he had for sale, we
+noticed Blackie coming with a man who ran largely to whiskers. "That's
+old Cloudburst Pete," Bill told me. "Another old timer who has shuffled
+all over this country."
+
+"How did he get that moniker?" I asked.
+
+"One time Pete came in here and was telling us fellows about a narrow
+escape he had from a cloudburst over in the Panamint. Pete said the
+cloud was just above him and about to burst and would have filled the
+canyon with a wall of water 90 feet high. A city fellow who had stopped
+for gas, asked Pete how come he didn't get drowned. Pete took a notion
+the fellow was trying to razz him. 'Well, Mister, if you must know, I
+lassoed the cloud, ground-hitched it and let it bust....'"
+
+After greeting Pete, Bill asked if he'd been walking all night.
+
+"Naw," Pete said. "Started around 11 o'clock, I reckon. Not so bad
+before sunup. Be hell going back. But I didn't come here to growl about
+the weather. I want some powder so I can get started. Found color
+yesterday. Looks like I'm in the big money."
+
+"Fine," Bill said. "I heard you've been laid up."
+
+"Oh, I broke a leg awhile back. Fell in a mine shaft. Didn't amount to
+much."
+
+"I know about that, but didn't you get hurt in a blast since then?"
+
+"Oh that--yeh. Got blowed out of a 20-foot hole. Three-four ribs busted,
+the doc said. Come to think of it, believe he mentioned a fractured
+collar bone. Wasn't half as bad as last week."
+
+"Good Lord ... what happened last week?"
+
+"That crazy Cyclone Thompson. You know him ... he pulled a stope gate
+and let five-six tons of muck down on me. Nobody knew it--not even
+Cyclone. Wore my fingers to the bone scratching out. Look at these
+hands...."
+
+Pete held up his mutilated hands. "They'll heal but bigod--that pair of
+brand new double-stitched overalls won't."
+
+"Well," Bill chuckled, "you know where the powder is. Go in and get it."
+
+Bill and Blackie remained to see me off, each with a friendly word of
+advice. "Just follow the wheel tracks," Bill said, as I climbed into my
+car and Blackie added: "Keep your eyes peeled for the cracker box signs
+along the edge of the road. You'll see 'em nailed to a stake and stuck
+in the ground."
+
+A moment later I was headed into a silence broken only by the whip of
+sage against the car. Ahead was the glimmer of a dry lake and in the
+distance a great mass of jumbled mountains that notched the pale skies.
+Beyond--what?
+
+I never dreamed then that for twenty-five years I would be poking around
+in those deceiving hills.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter II
+                       What Caused Death Valley?
+
+
+When you travel through the desolation of Death Valley along the Funeral
+Range, you may find it difficult to believe that several thousand feet
+above the top of your car was once a cool, inviting land with rivers and
+forests and lakes, and that hundreds of feet below you are the dry beds
+of seas that washed its shores.
+
+Scientists assert that all life--both animal and vegetable began in
+these buried seas--probably two and one-half billion years ago.
+
+It is certain that no life could have existed on the thin crust of earth
+covered as it was with deadly gases. Therefore, your remotest ancestors
+must have been sea creatures until they crawled out or were washed
+ashore in one of Nature's convulsions to become land dwellers.
+
+Since sea water contains more gold than has ever been found on the
+earth, it may be said that man on his way up from the lowest form of
+life was born in a solution of gold.
+
+That he survived, is due to two urges--the sex urge and the urge for
+food. Without either all life would cease.
+
+Note. The author's book, _Life's Grand Stairway_ soon to be published,
+contains a fast moving, factual story of man and his eternal quest for
+gold from the beginning of recorded time.
+
+Camping one night at Mesquite Spring, I heard a prospector cursing his
+burro. It wasn't a casual cursing, but a classic revelation of one who
+knew burros--the soul of them, from inquisitive eyes to deadly heels. A
+moment later he was feeding lumps of sugar to the beast and the feud
+ended on a pleasant note.
+
+We were sitting around the camp fire later when the prospector showed me
+a piece of quartz that glittered at twenty feet.
+
+"Do you have much?" I asked.
+
+"I've got more than Carter had oats, and I'm pulling out at daylight. Me
+and Thieving Jack."
+
+"I suppose," I said aimlessly, "you'll retire to a life of luxury; have
+a palace, a housekeeper, and a French chef."
+
+"Nope. Chinaman cook. Friend of mine struck it rich. He had a female
+cook. After that he couldn't call his soul his own. Me? First money I
+spend goes for pie. Never had my fill of pie. Next--" He paused and
+looked affectionately at Thieving Jack. "I'm going to buy a ranch over
+at Lone Pine with a stream running smack through the middle. Snow water.
+I aim to build a fence head high all around it and pension that burro
+off. As for me--no mansion. Just a cottage with a screen porch all
+around. I'm sick of horseflies and mosquitoes."
+
+He was off at sunrise and my thought was that God went with him and
+Thieving Jack.
+
+If you encounter scorching heat you will find little comfort in the fact
+that icebergs once floated in those ancient seas. It is almost certain
+that you will be curious about the disorderly jumble of gutted hills;
+the colorful canyons and strange formations and ask yourself what caused
+it.
+
+The answer is found on Black Mountain in the Funeral Range. Here
+occurred a convulsion of nature without any known parallel and the tops
+of nearby mountains became the bottom of America--an upheaval so violent
+that the oldest rocks were squeezed under pressure from the nethermost
+stratum of the earth to lie alongside the youngest on the surface.
+
+The seas and the fish vanished. The forests were buried. The prehistoric
+animals, the dinosaurs and elephants were trapped.
+
+The result, after undetermined ages, is today's Death Valley. A shorter
+explanation was that of my companion on my first trip to Black
+Mountain--a noted desert character--Jackass Slim. There we found a
+scientist who wished to enlighten us. To his conversation sprinkled with
+such words as Paleozoic and pre-Cambrian Slim listened raptly for an
+hour. Then the learned man asked Slim if he had made it plain.
+
+"Sure," Slim said. "You've been trying to say hell broke loose."
+
+The Indians, who saw Death Valley first, called it "Tomesha," which
+means Ground Afire, and warned adventurers, explorers, and trappers that
+it was a vast sunken region, intolerant of life.
+
+The first white Americans known to have seen it, belonged to the party
+of explorers led by John C. Fremont and guided by Kit Carson.
+
+Death Valley ends on the south in the narrow opening between the
+terminus of the Panamint Range and that of the Black Mountains. Through
+this opening, though unaware of it, Fremont saw the dry stream bed of
+the Amargosa River, on April 27, 1844, flowing north and in the distance
+"a high, snowy mountain." This mountain was Telescope Peak, 11,045 feet
+high.
+
+Nearly six years later, impatient Forty Niners enroute to California
+gold fields, having heard that the shortest way was through this
+forbidden sink, demanded that their guide take them across it.
+
+"I will go to hell with you, but not through Death Valley," said the
+wise Mormon guide, Captain Jefferson Hunt.
+
+Scoffing Hunt's warning, the Bennett-Arcane party deserted and with the
+Jayhawkers became the first white Americans to cross Death Valley. The
+suffering of the deserters, widely advertised, gave the region an evil
+reputation that kept it practically untraveled, unexplored, and accursed
+for the next 75 years, or until Charles Brown of Shoshone succeeded in
+having wheel tracks replaced with roads.
+
+With the opening of the Eichbaum toll road from Lone Pine to Stovepipe
+Wells in 1926-7 a trickle of tourists began, but actually as late as
+1932, Death Valley had fewer visitors than the Congo. A few prospectors,
+a few daring adventurers and a few ranchers had found in the areas
+adjoining, something in the great Wide Open that answered man's inherent
+craving for freedom and peace. "The hills that shut this valley in,"
+explained the old timer, "also shut out the mess we left behind."
+
+Tales of treasure came in the wake of the Forty Niners but it was not
+until 1860 that the first prospecting party was organized by Dr. Darwin
+French at Oroville, California. In the fall of that year he set out to
+find the Lost Gunsight mine, the story of which is told in another
+chapter.
+
+On this trip Dr. French discovered and gave his name to Darwin Falls and
+Darwin Wash in the Panamint range. He named Bennett's Well on the floor
+of Death Valley to honor Asa (or Asabel) Bennett, a member of the
+Bennett-Arcane party. He gave the name of another member of that party
+to Towne's Pass, now a thrilling route into Death Valley but then a
+breath-taking challenge to death.
+
+He named Furnace Creek after finding there a crude furnace for reducing
+ore. He also named Panamint Valley and Panamint Range, but neither the
+origin of the word Panamint nor its significance is known. Indians found
+there said their tribe was called Panamint, but those around there are
+Shoshones and Piutes. (See note at end of this chapter.)
+
+Also in 1860 William Lewis Manly who with John Rogers, a brave and husky
+Tennessean had rescued the survivors of the Bennett-Arcane party,
+returned to the valley he had named, to search for the Gunsight. Manly
+found nothing and reported later he was deserted by his companions and
+escaped death only when rescued by a wandering Indian.
+
+In 1861 Lt. Ives on a surveying mission explored a part of the valley in
+connection with the California Boundary Commission. He used for pack
+animals some of the camels which had been provided by Jefferson Davis,
+Secretary of War, for transporting supplies across the western deserts.
+
+In 1861 Dr. S. G. George, who had been a member of French's party,
+organized one of his own and for the same reason--to find the Lost
+Gunsight. He made several locations of silver and gold, explored a
+portion of the Panamint Range. The first man ever to scale Telescope
+Peak was a member of the George party. He was W. T. Henderson, who had
+also been with Dr. French. Henderson named the mountain "because," he
+said, "I could see for 200 miles in all directions as clearly as through
+a telescope."
+
+The most enduring accomplishment of the party was to bring back a name
+for the mountain range east of what is now known as Owens Valley, named
+for one of Fremont's party of explorers. From an Indian chief they
+learned this range was called Inyo and meant "the home of a Great
+Spirit." Ultimately the name was given to the county in the southeast
+corner of which is Death Valley.
+
+Tragedy dogged all the early expeditions. July 21, 1871 the Wheeler
+expedition left Independence to explore Death Valley. This party of 60
+included geologists, botanists, naturalists, and soldiers. One
+detachment was under command of Lt. George Wheeler. Lt. Lyle led the
+other. Lyle's detachment was guided by C. F. R. Hahn and the third day
+out Hahn was sent ahead to locate water. John Koehler, a naturalist of
+the party is alleged to have said that he would kill Hahn if he didn't
+find water. Failing to return Hahn was abandoned to his fate and he was
+never seen again.
+
+William Eagan, guide of Wheeler's party was sent to Rose Springs for
+water. He also failed to return. What became of him is not known and the
+army officers were justly denounced for callous indifference. On the
+desert, inexcusable desertion of a companion brands the deserter as an
+outcast and has often resulted in his lynching.
+
+It is interesting to note that apart from a Government Land Survey in
+1856, which proved to be utterly worthless, there is no authentic record
+of the white man in Death Valley between 1849 and 1860. However, during
+this decade the canyons on the west side of the Panamint harbored
+numerous renegades who had held up a Wells-Fargo stage or slit a miner's
+throat for his poke of gold. Some were absorbed into the life of the
+wasteland when the discovery of silver in Surprise Canyon brought a
+hectic mob of adventurers to create hell-roaring Panamint City.
+
+When, in the middle Seventies Nevada silver kings, John P. Jones and Wm.
+R. Stewart, who were Fortune's children on the Comstock, decided
+$2,000,000 was enough to lose at Panamint City, many of the outlaws
+wandered over the mountain and down the canyon to cross Death Valley and
+settle wherever they thought they could survive on the eastern
+approaches.
+
+Soon Ash Meadows, Furnace Creek Ranch, Stump Springs, the Manse Ranch,
+Resting Springs, and Pahrump Ranch became landmarks.
+
+The first white man known to have settled in Death Valley was a person
+of some cunning and no conscience, known as Bellerin' Teck, Bellowing
+Tex Bennett, and Bellowin' Teck. He settled at Furnace Creek in 1870 and
+erected a shanty alongside the water where the Bennett-Arcane party had
+camped when driven from Ash Meadows by Indians whose gardens they had
+raided and whose squaws they had abused, according to a legend of the
+Indians and referred to with scant attention to details, by Manly.
+(Panamint Tom, famed Indian of the region, in speaking of this raid by
+the whites, told me that the head man of his tribe sent runners to Ash
+Meadows for reinforcements and that the recruits were marched in circles
+around boulders and in and out of ravines to give the impression of
+superior strength. This strategy deceived the whites, who then went on
+their way.)
+
+Teck claimed title to all the country in sight. Little is known of his
+past, but whites later understood that he chose the forbidding region to
+outsmart a sheriff. He brought water through an open ditch from its
+source in the nearby foothills and grew alfalfa and grain. He named his
+place Greenland Ranch and it was the beginning of the present Furnace
+Creek Ranch.
+
+There is a tradition that Teck supplemented his meager earnings from the
+ranch by selling half interests to wayfarers, subsequently driving them
+off.
+
+There remains a record of one such victim--a Mormon adventurer named
+Jackson. In part payment Teck took a pair of oxen, Jackson's money and
+his only weapon, a rifle. Shortly Teck began to show signs of
+dissatisfaction. His temper flared more frequently and Jackson became
+increasingly alarmed. When finally Teck came bellowing from his cabin,
+brandishing his gun, Jackson did the right thing at the right moment. He
+fled, glad to escape with his life.
+
+This became the pattern for the next wayfarer and the next. Teck always
+craftily demanded their weapons in the trade, but knowing that sooner or
+later some would take their troubles to a sheriff or return for revenge,
+Teck sold the ranch, left the country and no trace of his destiny
+remains.
+
+Before Aaron and Rosie Winters or Borax Smith ever saw Death Valley, one
+who was to attain fame greater than either listed more than 2000
+different plants that grew in the area.
+
+Notwithstanding this important contribution to knowledge of the valley's
+flora, only one or two historians have mentioned his name, and these in
+books or periodicals long out of print.
+
+Two decades later he was to become famous as Brigadier General Frederick
+Funston of the Spanish-American War--the only major war in America's
+history fought by an army which was composed entirely of volunteers
+without a single draftee.
+
+Of interest to this writer is the fact that he was my brigade commander
+and a soldier from the boots up. Not five feet tall, he was every inch a
+fighting man. I served with him while he captured Emilio Aguinaldo,
+famous _Filipino Insurrecto_.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter III
+                        Aaron and Rosie Winters
+
+
+While Bellerin' Teck was selling half interests in the spectacular hills
+to the unwary, he actually walked over a treasure of more millions than
+his wildest dreams had conjured.
+
+Teck's nearest neighbor lived at Ash Meadows about 60 miles east of the
+valley.
+
+Ash Meadows is a flat desert area in Nevada along the California border.
+With several water holes, subterranean streams, and abundant wild grass
+it was a resting place for early emigrants and a hole-in for
+prospectors. It was also an ideal refuge for gentlemen who liked its
+distance from sheriffs and the ease with which approaching horsemen
+could be seen from nearby hills.
+
+Lacking was woman. The male needed the female but there wasn't a white
+woman in the country. So he took what the market afforded--a squaw and
+not infrequently two or three. "He's my son all right," a patriarch once
+informed me, "but it's been so long I don't exactly recollect which of
+them squaws was his mother."
+
+Usually the wife was bought. Sometimes for a trinket. Often a horse.
+Among the trappers who first blazed the trails to the West, 30 beaver
+skins were considered a fair price for an able bodied squaw. She was
+capable in rendering domestic service and loyal in love. Too often the
+consort's fidelity was transient.
+
+"For 20 years," said the noted trapper, Killbuck, "I packed a squaw
+along--not one, but a many. First I had a Blackfoot--the darndest slut
+as ever cried for fo-farrow. I lodge-poled her on Coulter's Creek ... as
+good as four packs of beaver I gave for old Bull-tail's daughter. He was
+the head chief of the Ricaree. Thar wan't enough scarlet cloth nor beads
+... in Sublette's packs for her ... I sold her to Cross-Eagle for one of
+Jake Hawkins' guns.... Then I tried the Sioux, the Shian (Cheyenne) and
+a Digger from the other side, who made the best moccasins as ever I
+wore."
+
+So Aaron Winters chose his mate from the available supply and with
+Rosie, part Mexican and Indian, part Spanish, he settled in Ash Meadows
+in a dugout. In front and adjoining had been added a shack, part wood,
+part stone. The floors were dirt. Rosie dragged in posts, poles, and
+brush and made a shed. Aaron found time between hunting and trapping to
+add a room of unmortared stone. At times there was no money, but pi�on
+nuts grew in the mountains, desert tea and squaw cabbage were handy and
+the beans of mesquite could be ground into flour.
+
+Rosie, to whom one must yield admiration, was not the first woman in
+Winters' life. "He liked his women," Ed Stiles recalled, "and changed
+'em often." But to Rosie, Aaron Winters was always devoted. Her material
+reward was little but all who knew her praised her beauty and her
+virtues.
+
+One day when dusk was gathering there was a rap on the sagging slab door
+and Rosie Winters opened it on an angel unawares. The Winters invited
+the stranger in, shared their meager meal. After supper they sat up
+later than usual, listening to the story of the stranger's travels. He
+was looking for borax, he told them. "It's a white stuff...." At this
+time, only two or three unimportant deposits of borax were known to
+exist in America and the average prospector knew nothing about it.
+
+The first borax was mined in Tibet. There in the form of tincal it was
+loaded on the backs of sheep, transported across the Himalayas and
+shipped to London. It was so rare that it was sold by the ounce. Later
+the more intelligent of the western prospectors began to learn that
+borax was something to keep in mind.
+
+To Aaron Winters it was just something bought in a drug store, but Rosie
+was interested in the "white stuff." She wanted to know how one could
+tell when the white stuff was borax. Patiently the guest explained how
+to make the tests: "Under the torch it will burn green...."
+
+Finally Rosie made a bed for the wayfarer in the lean-to and long after
+he blew out his candle Rosie Winters lay awake, wondering about some
+white stuff she'd seen scattered over a flat down in the hellish heat of
+Death Valley. She remembered that it whitened the crust of a big area,
+stuck to her shoes and clothes and got in her hair when the wind lifted
+the silt.
+
+The next morning Rosie and Aaron bade the guest good luck and goodbye
+and he went into the horizon without even leaving his name. Then Rosie
+turned to Aaron: "Maybe," she said ... "maybe that white stuff we see
+that time below Furnace Creek--maybe that is borax."
+
+"Might be," Aaron answered.
+
+"Why don't we go see?" Rosie asked. "Maybe some Big Horn sheep--" Rosie
+knew her man and Aaron Winters got his rifle and Rosie packed the
+sow-belly and beans.
+
+It was a long, gruelling trip down into the valley under a Death Valley
+sun but hope sustained them. They made their camp at Furnace Creek, then
+Rosie led Aaron over the flats she remembered. She scooped up some of
+the white stuff that looked like cotton balls while Aaron prepared for
+the test. Then the brief, uncertain moment when the white stuff touched
+the flame. Tensely they watched, Aaron grimly curious rather than
+hopeful; Rosie with pounding heart and lips whispering a prayer.
+
+Then, miracle of miracles--the green flame. They looked excitedly into
+each other's eyes, each unable to believe. In that moment, Rosie, always
+devout, lifted her eyes to heaven and thanked her God. Neither had any
+idea of the worth of their find. Vaguely they knew it meant spending
+money. A new what-not for Rosie's mantel. Perhaps pine boards to cover
+the hovel's dirt floor; maybe a few pieces of golden oak furniture; a
+rifle with greater range than Aaron's old one; silk or satin to make a
+dress for Rosie.
+
+"Writers have had to draw on their imagination for what happened," a
+descendant of the Winters once told me. "They say Uncle Aaron exclaimed,
+'Rosie, she burns green!' or 'Rosie, we're rich!' but Aunt Rosie said
+they were so excited they couldn't remember, but she knew what they did!
+They went over to the ditch that Bellerin' Teck had dug to water the
+ranch and in its warm water soaked their bunioned feet."
+
+Returning to Ash Meadows they faced the problem of what to do with the
+"white stuff." Unlike gold, it couldn't be sold on sight, because it was
+a new industry, and little was known about its handling. Finally Aaron
+learned that a rich merchant in San Francisco, named Coleman was
+interested in borax in a small way and lost no time in sending samples
+to Coleman.
+
+W. T. Coleman was a Kentucky aristocrat who had come to California
+during the gold rush and attained both fortune and the affection of the
+people of the state. He had been chosen leader of the famed Vigilantes,
+who had rescued San Francisco from a gang of the lawless as tough as the
+world ever saw.
+
+Actually Coleman's interest in borax was a minor incident in the
+handling of his large fortune and his passionate devotion to the
+development of his adopted state. For that reason alone, Coleman had
+become interested in the small deposits of borax discovered by Francis
+Smith, first at Columbus Marsh.
+
+Smith had been a prospector before coming to California, wandering all
+over western country, looking for gold and silver. He was one of those
+who had heard that borax was worth keeping in mind.
+
+Reaching Nevada and needing a grubstake, he began to cut wood to supply
+mines around Columbus, Aurora, and Candelaria. On Teel's Marsh he found
+a large growth of mesquite, built a shack and claimed all the wood and
+the site as his own. Upon a portion of it, some Mexicans had cut and
+corded some of the wood and Smith refused to let them haul it off. They
+left grudgingly and with threats to return. The Mexicans, of course, had
+as much right to the wood as Smith.
+
+Sensing trouble and having no weapons at his camp, he went twelve miles
+to borrow a rifle. But there were no cartridges and he had to ride sixty
+miles over the mountains to Aurora where he found only four. Returning
+to his shack, he found the Mexicans had also returned with
+reinforcements. Twenty-four were now at work and their mood was
+murderous. Smith had a companion whose courage he didn't trust and
+ordered him to go out in the brush and keep out of the way.
+
+The Mexicans told Smith they were going to take the wood. Smith warned
+that he would kill the first man who touched the pile. With only four
+cartridges to kill 20 men, it was obviously a bluff. One of the Mexicans
+went to the pile and picked up a stick. Smith put his rifle to his
+shoulder and ordered the fellow to drop it. Unafraid and still holding
+the stick the Mexican said: "You may kill me, but my friends will kill
+you. Put your rifle down and we will talk it over."
+
+They had cut additional wood during his absence and demanded that they
+be permitted to take all the wood they had cut. Smith consented and when
+the Mexicans had gone he staked out the marsh as a mining claim--which
+led to the connection with Coleman.
+
+Upon receipt of Winters' letter, Coleman forwarded it to Smith and asked
+him to investigate the Winters claim. Smith's report was enthusiastic.
+Coleman then sent two capable men, William Robertson and Rudolph
+Neuenschwander to look over the Winters discovery, with credentials to
+buy. Again Rosie and Aaron Winters heard the flutter of angel wings at
+the hovel door. This time the angels left $20,000. Rarely in this world
+has buyer bought so much for so little, but to Aaron and Rosie Winters
+it was all the money in the world.
+
+Despite the troubles of operating in a place so remote from market and
+with problems of a product about which too little was known, borax was
+soon adding $100,000 a year to Coleman's already fabulous fortune.
+
+Francis M. (Borax) Smith was put in charge of operations under the firm
+name of Coleman and Smith.
+
+Freed from the sordid squalor of the Ash Meadows hovel, the Winters
+bought the Pahrump Ranch, a landmark of Pahrump Valley, and settled down
+to watch the world go by.
+
+Thus began the Pacific Coast Borax Company, one of the world's
+outstanding corporations. Later Smith was to become president of the
+Pacific Coast Borax Company and later still, he was to head a three
+hundred million dollar corporation for the development of the San
+Francisco and Oakland areas and then face bankruptcy and ruin.
+
+Overlooking the site where Rosie and Aaron made the discovery, now
+stands the magnificent Furnace Creek Inn.
+
+One day while sitting on the hotel terrace, I noticed a plane discharge
+a group of the Company's English owners and their guests. Meticulously
+dressed, they paid scant attention to the desolation about and hastened
+to the cooling refuge of their caravansary. At dinner they sat down to
+buttered mignon and as they talked casually of the races at Ascot and
+the ball at Buckingham Palace, I looked out over that whitehot slab of
+hell and thought of Rosie and Aaron Winters trudging with calloused feet
+behind a burro--their dinner, sow-belly and beans.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter IV
+                   John Searles and His Lake of Ooze
+
+
+Actually the first discovery of borax in Death Valley was made by
+Isadore Daunet in 1875, five years before Winters' discovery. Daunet had
+left Panamint City when it was apparent that town was through forever
+and with six of his friends was en route to new diggings in Arizona.
+
+He was a seasoned, hardy adventurer and risked a short cut across Death
+Valley in mid-summer. Running out of water, his party killed a burro,
+drank its blood; but the deadly heat beat them down. Indians came across
+one of the thirst-crazed men and learned that Daunet and others were
+somewhere about. They found Daunet and two companions. The others
+perished.
+
+When Daunet heard of the Winters sale five years later, like Rosie
+Winters he remembered the white stuff about the water, to which the
+Indians had taken him. He hurried back and in 1880 filed upon mining
+claims amounting to 260 acres. He started at once a refining plant which
+he called Eagle Borax Works and began operating one year before Old
+Harmony began to boil borax in 1881. Daunet's product however, was of
+inferior grade and unprofitable and work was soon abandoned. The
+unpredictable happened and dark days fell upon borax and William T.
+Coleman.
+
+In 1888 the advocates of free trade had a field day when the bill
+authored by Roger Q. Mills of Texas became the law of the land and borax
+went on the free list. The empire of Coleman tumbled in a financial
+scare--attributed by Coleman to a banker who had falsely undervalued
+Coleman's assets after a report by a borax expert who betrayed him. "My
+assets," wrote Coleman, "were $4,400,000. My debts $2,000,000." No
+person but Coleman lost a penny.
+
+But Borax Smith was never one to surrender without a fight and organized
+the Pacific Coast Borax Company to take over the property and the
+success of that company justifies the faith and the integrity of
+Coleman.
+
+Marketing the borax presented a problem in transportation even more
+difficult than it did in Tibet. At first it was scraped from the flat
+surface of the valley where it looked like alkali. It was later
+discovered in ledge form in the foothills of the Funeral Mountains. The
+sight of this discovery was called Monte Blanco--now almost a forgotten
+name.
+
+The borax was boiled in tanks and after crystallization was hauled by
+mule team across one hundred and sixty-five miles of mountainous desert
+at a pace of fifteen miles per day--if there were no accidents--or an
+average of twenty days for the round trip. The summer temperatures in
+the cooler hours of the night were 112 degrees; in the day, 120 to 134
+(the highest ever recorded). There were only four water holes on the
+route. Hence, water had to be hauled for the team.
+
+The borax was hauled to Daggett and Mojave and thence shipped to
+Alameda, California, to be refined. Charles Bennett, a rancher from
+Pahrump Valley, was among the first to contract the hauling of the raw
+product.
+
+In 1883 J. W. S. Perry, superintendent of the borax company, decided the
+company should own its freighting service and under his direction the
+famous 20 mule team borax wagons with the enormous wheels were designed.
+Orders were given for ten wagons. Each weighed 7800 pounds. Two of these
+wagons formed a train, the load being 40,000 pounds. To the second wagon
+was attached a smaller one with a tank holding 1200 gallons of water.
+
+"I'd leave around midnight," Ed Stiles said. "Generally 110 or 112
+degrees."
+
+The first hauls of these wagons were to Mojave, with overnight stations
+every sixteen miles. Thirty days were required for the round trip.
+
+In the Eighties a prospector in the then booming Calico Mountains,
+between Barstow and Yermo discovered an ore that puzzled him. He showed
+it to others and though the bustling town of Calico was filled with
+miners from all parts of the world, none could identify it. Under the
+blow torch the crystalline surface crumbled. Out of curiosity he had it
+assayed. It proved to be calcium borate and was the world's first
+knowledge of borax in that form. Previously it had been found in the
+form of "cotton ball." The Pacific Coast Borax Company acquired the
+deposits; named the ore Colemanite in honor of W. T. Coleman.
+
+Operations in Death Valley were suspended and transferred to the new
+deposit, which saved a ten to fifteen days' haul besides providing a
+superior product. The deposit was exhausted however, in the early part
+of the century when Colemanite was discovered in the Black Mountains and
+the first mine--the Lila C. began operations.
+
+It is a bit ironical that during the depression of the Thirties, two
+prospectors who neither knew nor cared anything about borax were poking
+around Kramer in relatively flat country in sight of the paved highway
+between Barstow and Mojave when they found what is believed to be the
+world's largest deposit of borax.
+
+It was a good time for bargain hunters and was acquired by the Pacific
+Coast Borax Company and there in a town named Boron, all its borax is
+now produced.
+
+Even before Aaron Winters or Isadore Daunet, John Searles was shipping
+borax out of Death Valley country. With his brother Dennis, member of
+the George party of 1861, Searles had returned and was developing gold
+and silver claims in the Slate Range overlooking a slimy marsh. They had
+a mill ready for operation when the Indians, then making war on the
+whites of Inyo county destroyed it with fire. A man of outstanding
+courage, Searles remained to recuperate his losses. He had read about
+the Trona deposits first found in the Nile Valley and was reminded of it
+when he put some of the water from the marsh in a vessel to boil and use
+for drinking. Later he noticed the formation of crystals and then
+suspecting borax he went to San Francisco with samples and sought
+backing. He found a promoter who after examining the samples, told him,
+"If the claims are what these samples indicate, I can get all the money
+you need...."
+
+An analysis was made showing borax.
+
+"But where is this stuff located?"
+
+Searles told him as definitely as he could. He was invited to remain in
+San Francisco while a company could be organized. "It will take but a
+few days...."
+
+Searles explained that he hadn't filed on the ground and preferred to go
+back and protect the claim.
+
+The suave promoter brushed his excuse aside. "Little chance of anybody's
+going into that God forsaken hole." He called an associate. "Take Mr.
+Searles in charge and show him San Francisco...."
+
+Not a rounder, Searles bored quickly with night life. His funds ran low.
+He asked the loan of $25.
+
+"Certainly...." His host stepped into an adjacent office, returning
+after a moment to say the cashier was out but that he had left
+instructions to give Searles whatever he wished.
+
+Searles made trip after trip to the cashier's office but never found him
+in and becoming suspicious, he pawned his watch and hurried home,
+arriving at midnight four days later.
+
+The next morning a stranger came and something about his attire, his
+equipment, and his explanation of his presence didn't ring true and
+Searles was wary even before the fellow, believing that Searles was
+still in San Francisco announced that he had been sent to find a man
+named Searles to look over some borax claims. "Do you know where they
+are?"
+
+Searles thought quickly. He had not as yet located his monuments nor
+filed a notice. He pointed down the valley. "They're about 20 miles
+ahead...."
+
+The fellow went on his way and before he was out of sight, Searles was
+staking out the marsh and with one of the most colorful of Death Valley
+characters, Salty Bill Parkinson, began operations in 1872. Incorporated
+under the name of San Bernardino Borax Company, the business grew and
+was later sold to Borax Smith's Pacific Coast Borax Company.
+
+Once while Searles was away hunting grizzlies, the Indians who had
+burned his mill, raided his ranch and drove his mules across the range.
+Suspecting the Piutes, he got his rifle and two pistols.
+
+"They'll kill you," he was warned.
+
+"I'm going to get those mules," Searles snapped and followed their
+tracks across the Slate Range and Panamint Valley. High in the
+overlooking mountains he came upon the Indians feasting upon one of the
+animals and was immediately attacked with bows and arrows. He killed
+seven bucks and the rest ran, but an Indian's arrow was buried in his
+eye. He jerked the arrow out, later losing the eye, pushed on and
+recovered the rest of his mules. Thereafter the Piutes avoided Searles
+and his marsh because, they said, he possessed the "evil eye."
+
+On the same lake where Searles began operations, the town of Trona was
+established to house the employees and processing plants of the American
+Potash and Chemical Company. It was British owned, though this ownership
+was successfully concealed in the intricate corporate structure of the
+Pacific Coast Borax Company, but later sold for twelve million dollars
+to Hollanders who left the management as they found it. During World War
+II Uncle Sam discovered that the Hollanders were stooges for German
+financiers' Potash Cartel.
+
+The Alien Property Custodian took over and ordered the sale of the stock
+to Americans. Today it is what its name implies--an American company.
+
+From the ooze where John Searles first camped to hunt grizzly bears, is
+being taken more than 100 commercial products and every day of your life
+you use one or more of them if you eat, bathe, or wear clothes, brush
+your teeth or deal with druggist, grocer, dentist or doctor.
+
+Fearing exhaustion of the visible supply (the ooze is 70 feet deep)
+tests were made in 1917 to determine what was below. Result, supply one
+century; value two billion dollars.
+
+Here are a few things containing the product of the ooze. Fertilizer for
+your flowers, orchards, and fields. Baking soda, dyes, lubricating oils,
+paper. Ethyl gasoline, porcelain, medicines, fumigants, leathers,
+solvents, cosmetics, textiles, ceramics, chemical and pharmaceutical
+preparations.
+
+About 1300 tons of these products are shipped out every day over a
+company-owned railroad and transshipped at Searles' Station over the
+Southern Pacific, to go finally in one form or another into every home
+in America and most of those in the entire world.
+
+The weird valley meanders southward from the lake through blown-up
+mountains gorgeously colored and grimly defiant--a trip to thrill the
+lover of the wild and rugged.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter V
+                           But Where Was God?
+
+
+For years, on the edge of the road near Tule Hole, a rough slab marked
+Jim Dayton's grave, on which were piled the bleached bones of Dayton's
+horses. On the board were these words: "Jas. Dayton. Died 1898."
+
+The accuracy of the date of Dayton's death as given on the bronze plaque
+on the monument and on the marker which it replaced, has been
+challenged. The author of this book wrote the epitaph for the monument
+and the date on it is the date which was on the original marker--an old
+ironing board that had belonged to Pauline Gower. In a snapshot made by
+the writer, the date 1898, burned into the board with a redhot poker
+shows clearly.
+
+The two men who know most about the matter, Wash Cahill and Frank
+Hilton, whom he sent to find Dayton or his body, both declared the date
+on the marker correct.
+
+The late Ed Stiles brought Dayton into Death Valley. Stiles was working
+for Jim McLaughlin (Stiles called him McGlothlin), who operated a
+freighting service with headquarters at Bishop. McLaughlin ordered
+Stiles to take a 12 mule team and report to the Eagle Borax Works in
+Death Valley. "I can't give you any directions. You'll just have to find
+the place." Stiles had never been in Death Valley nor could he find
+anyone who had. It was like telling a man to start across the ocean and
+find a ship named Sally.
+
+At Bishop Creek in Owens Valley Stiles decided he needed a helper. There
+he found but one person willing to go--a youngster barely out of his
+teens--Jim Dayton.
+
+Dayton remained in Death Valley and somewhat late in life, on one of his
+trips out, romance entered. After painting an intriguing picture of the
+lotus life a girl would find at Furnace Creek, he asked the lady to
+share it with him. She promptly accepted.
+
+A few months later, the bride suggested that a trip out would make her
+love the lotus life even more and so in the summer of 1898 she tearfully
+departed. Soon she wrote Jim in effect that it hadn't turned out as she
+had hoped. Instead, she had become reconciled to shade trees, green
+lawns, neighbors, and places to go and if he wanted to live with her
+again he would just have to abandon the Death Valley paradise.
+
+Dayton loaded his wagon with all his possessions, called his dog and
+started for Daggett.
+
+Wash Cahill, who was to become vice-president of the borax company, was
+then working at its Daggett office. Cahill received from Dayton a letter
+which he saw from the date inside and the postmark on the envelope, had
+been held somewhere for at least two weeks before it was mailed.
+
+The letter contained Dayton's resignation and explained why Dayton was
+leaving. He had left a reliable man in temporary charge and was bringing
+his household goods; also two horses which had been borrowed at Daggett.
+
+Knowing that Dayton should have arrived in Daggett at least a week
+before the actual arrival of the letter, Cahill was alarmed and
+dispatched Frank Hilton, a teamster and handy man, and Dolph Lavares to
+see what had happened.
+
+On the roadside at Tule Hole they found Dayton's body, his dog patiently
+guarding it. Apparently Dayton had become ill, stopped to rest. "Maybe
+the sun beat him down. Maybe his ticker jammed," said Shorty Harris,
+"but the horses were fouled in the harness and were standing up dead."
+
+There could be no flowers for Jim Dayton nor peal of organ. So they went
+to his wagon, loosened the shovel lashed to the coupling pole. They dug
+a hole beside the road, rolled Jim Dayton's body into it.
+
+The widow later settled in a comfortable house in town with neighbors
+close at hand. There she was trapped by fire. While the flames were
+consuming the building a man ran up. Someone said, "She's in that upper
+room." The brave and daring fellow tore his way through the crowd,
+leaped through the window into a room red with flames and dragged her
+out, her clothing still afire. He laid her down, beat out the flames,
+but she succumbed.
+
+A multitude applauded the hero. A little later over in Nevada another
+multitude lynched him. Between heroism and depravity--what?
+
+Although Tule Hole has long been a landmark of Death Valley, few know
+its story and this I believe to be its first publication.
+
+One day while resting his team, Stiles noticed a patch of tules growing
+a short distance off the road and taking a shovel he walked over,
+started digging a hole on what he thought was a million to one chance of
+finding water, and thus reduce the load that had to be hauled for use
+between springs. "I hadn't dug a foot," he told me "before I struck
+water. I dug a ditch to let it run off and after it cleared I drank
+some, found it good and enlarged the hole."
+
+He went on to Daggett with his load. Repairs to his wagon train required
+a week and by the time he returned five weeks had elapsed. "I stopped
+the team opposite the tules, got out and started over to look at the
+hole I'd dug. When I got within a few yards three or four naked squaw
+hags scurried into the brush. I stopped and looked away toward the
+mountains to give 'em a chance to hide. Then I noticed two Indian bucks,
+each leading a riderless horse, headed for the Panamints. Then I knew
+what had happened."
+
+Ed Stiles was a desert man and knew his Indians. Somewhere up in a
+Panamint canyon the chief had called a powwow and when it was over the
+head men had gone from one wickiup to another and looked over all the
+toothless old crones who no longer were able to serve, yet consumed and
+were in the way. Then they had brought the horses and with two strong
+bucks to guard them, they had ridden down the canyon and out across the
+desert to the water hole. There the crones had slid to the ground. The
+bucks had dropped a sack of pi�on nuts. Of course, the toothless hags
+could not crunch the nuts and even if they could, the nuts would not
+last long. Then they would have to crawl off into the scrawny brush and
+grabble for herbs or slap at grasshoppers, but these are quicker than
+palsied hands and in a little while the sun would beat them down.
+
+The rest was up to God.
+
+The distinction of driving the first 20 mule team has always been a
+matter of controversy. Over a nation-wide hook-up, the National
+Broadcasting Co. once presented a playlet based upon these conflicting
+claims. A few days afterward, at the annual Death Valley picnic held at
+Wilmington, John Delameter, a speaker, announced that he'd made
+considerable research and was prepared to name the person actually
+entitled to that honor. The crowd, including three claimants of the
+title, moved closer, their ears cupped in eager attention as Delameter
+began to speak. One of the claimants nudged my arm with a confident
+smile, whispered, "Now you'll know...." A few feet away his rivals,
+their pale eyes fixed on the speaker, hunched forward to miss no word.
+
+Mr. Delameter said: "There were several wagons of 16 mules and who drove
+the first of these, I do not know, but I do know who drove the first 20
+mule team."
+
+Covertly and with gleams of triumph, the claimants eyed each other as
+Delameter paused to turn a page of his manuscript. Then with a loud
+voice he said: "I drove it myself!"
+
+May God have mercy on his soul.
+
+A few days later I rang the doorbell at the ranch house of Ed Stiles,
+almost surrounded by the city of San Bernardino. As no one answered, I
+walked to the rear, and across a field of green alfalfa saw a man
+pitching hay in a temperature of 120 degrees. It was Stiles who in 1876
+was teaming in Bodie--toughest of the gold towns.
+
+I sat down in the shade of his hay. He stood in the sun. I said, "Mr.
+Stiles, do you know who drove the first 20 mule team in Death Valley?"
+
+He gave me a kind of _et-tu, Brute_ look and smiled.
+
+"In the fall of 1882 I was driving a 12 mule team from the Eagle Borax
+Works to Daggett. I met a man on a buckboard who asked if the team was
+for sale. I told him to write Mr. McLaughlin. It took 15 days to make
+the round trip and when I got back I met the same man. He showed me a
+bill of sale for the team and hired me to drive it. He had an eight mule
+team and a new red wagon, driven by a fellow named Webster. The man in
+the buckboard was Borax Smith.
+
+"Al Maynard, foreman for Smith and Coleman, was at work grubbing out
+mesquite to plant alfalfa on what is now Furnace Creek Ranch. Maynard
+told me to take the tongue out of the new wagon and put a trailer tongue
+in it. 'In the morning,' he said, 'hitch it to your wagon. Put a water
+wagon behind your trailer, hook up those eight mules with your team and
+go to Daggett.'
+
+"That was the first time that a 20 mule team was driven out of Death
+Valley. Webster was supposed to swamp for me. But when he saw his new
+red wagon and mules hitched up with my outfit, he walked into the office
+and quit his job."
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter VI
+                          Death Valley Geology
+
+
+The pleasure of your trip through the Big Sink will be enhanced if you
+know something about the structural features which are sure to arrest
+your attention.
+
+For undetermined ages Death Valley was desert. Then rivers and lakes.
+Rivers dried. Lakes evaporated. Again, desert. It is believed that in
+thousands of years there have been no changes other than those caused by
+earthquakes and erosion.
+
+It is no abuse of the superlative to say that the foremost authority
+upon Death Valley geology is Doctor Levi Noble, who has studied it under
+the auspices of the U.S. Geological Survey since 1917. He has ridden
+over more of it than anyone and because of his studies, earlier
+conclusions of geologists are scrapped today.
+
+From a pamphlet published by the American Geological Society with the
+permission of the U. S. Dept. of Interior, now out of print, I quote a
+few passages which Doctor Noble, its author, once described to me as
+"dull reading, even for scientists."
+
+"The southern Death Valley region contains rocks of at least eight
+geologic systems whose aggregate thickness certainly exceeds 45,000 feet
+for the stratified rocks alone."
+
+"The dissected playa or lake beds in Amargosa Valley between Shoshone
+and Tecopa contain elephant remains that are Pleistocene...."
+
+"Rainbow Mountain is one of the geological show places of the Death
+Valley region.... Here the Amargosa river has cut a canyon 1000 feet
+deep.... The mountain is made up of thrust slices of Cambrian and
+pre-Cambrian rocks alternating with slices of Tertiary rocks, all of
+which dip in general about 30 to 40 degrees eastward, but are also
+anticlinally arched."
+
+"None of the geologic terms in common use appear exactly to fit this
+mosaic of large tightly packed individual blocks of different ages
+occupying a definite zone above a major thrust fault."
+
+The significant feature is that a stratum that began with creation may
+lie above one that is an infant in the age of rock--a puzzle that will
+engage men of Levi Noble's talents for years to come. But one doesn't
+have to be a member of the American Geological Society to find thrills
+in other gripping features.
+
+Throughout the area south of Shoshone are many hot springs containing
+boron and fluorine--some with traces of radium. The water is believed to
+come from a buried river. The source of other hot springs in the Death
+Valley area is unknown.
+
+More startling features were related to Shorty Harris and me at
+Bennett's Well in the bottom of Death Valley where we met one of
+Shorty's friends. Lanky and baked brown, in each wrinkle of his face the
+sun had etched a smile. "Shorty," he said, "yachts will be sailing
+around here some day. There's a passage to the sea, sure as hell."
+
+"What makes you think so?" Shorty asked.
+
+"Those salt pools. Just come from there. I was watching the crystals;
+felt the ground move a little. Pool started sloshing. A sea serpent with
+eyes big as a wagon wheel and teeth full of kelp stuck his head up.
+Where'd he come from? No kelp in this valley. That prove anything?"
+
+Ubehebe Crater is believed to have resulted from the only major change
+in the topography of the valley since its return to desert, but John
+Delameter, old time freighter, thought geologists didn't know what they
+were talking about. "When I first saw Saratoga Spring I could straddle
+it. Full of fish four inches long. Next time, three springs and a lake.
+Fish shrunk to one inch and different shaped head."
+
+Actually these fish are the degenerate descendants of the larger fish
+that lived in the streams and lakes that once watered Death Valley--an
+interesting study in the survival of species. The real name, _Cyprinodon
+Macularius_, is too large a mouthful for the natives so they are called
+desert sardines, though they are in reality a small killifish.
+
+Dan Breshnahan, in charge of a road crew working between Furnace Creek
+Inn and Stove Pipe Well, ordered some of the men to dig a hole to sink
+some piles. Two feet beneath a hard crust they encountered muck. When
+they hit the pile with a sledge it would bounce back. Dan put a board
+across the top. With a man on each end of the board, the rebound was
+prevented and the pile driven into hard earth. "I'm convinced that under
+that road is a lake of mire and Lord help the fellow who goes through,"
+Dan said.
+
+A heavily loaded 20 mule team wagon driven by Delameter broke the
+surface of this ooze and two days were required to get it out. To test
+the depth, he tied an anvil to his bridle rein and let it down. The lead
+line of a 20 mule team is 120 feet long. It sank (he said) the length of
+the line and reached no bottom.
+
+On Ash Meadows, a few miles from Death Valley Junction and on the side
+of a mountain is what is known as The Devil's Hole which it is said has
+no bottom. True or false, none has ever been found.
+
+A steep trail leads down to the water which will then be over your head.
+Indians will tell you that a squaw fell into this hole within the memory
+of the living and that she was sucked to the bottom and came out at Big
+Spring several miles distant. The latter is a large hole in the middle
+of the desert and from its throat, also bottomless, pours a large volume
+of clear, warm water.
+
+"Explored?" shouted Dad Fairbanks one day when a white-haired prospector
+declared every foot of Death Valley had been worked over. "It isn't
+scratched!"
+
+Only the day before (in 1934), Dr. Levi Noble had been working in the
+mountains overlooking the valley on the east rim. Through his field
+glasses he saw a formation that looked like a natural bridge. When he
+returned to Shoshone he phoned Harry Gower, Pacific Borax Co. official
+at Furnace Creek of his discovery and suggested that Gower investigate.
+
+Since Furnace Creek Inn wanted such attractions for its guests, Gower
+went immediately and almost within rifle shot of a road used since the
+Seventies, he found the bridge.
+
+That too is Death Valley--land of continual surprise.
+
+Death Valley is the hottest spot in North America. The U.S. Army, in a
+test of clothing suitable for hot weather made some startling
+discoveries. According to records, on one day in every seven years the
+temperature reaches 180 on the valley floor. But five feet above ground
+where official temperatures are recorded the thermometer drops 55
+degrees to 125.
+
+The highest temperature ever recorded was 134 at Furnace Creek
+Ranch--only two degrees below the world's record in Morocco. In 1913,
+the week of July 7-14, the temperature never got below 127. Official
+recording differs little from that of Arabia, India, and lower
+California, but the duration is longer.
+
+Left in the sun, water in a pail of ordinary size will evaporate in an
+hour. Bodies decompose two or three hours after rigor mortis begins but
+some have been found in certain areas at higher altitudes dried like
+leather. A rattlesnake dropped into a bucket and set in the sun will die
+in 20 minutes.
+
+The evaporation of salt from the body is rapid and many prospectors
+swallow a mouthful of common salt before going out into a killing sun.
+
+One of the pitiable features of death on the desert is that bodies are
+found with fingers worn to the bone from frantic digging and often
+beneath the cadaver is water at two feet.
+
+There is also legendary weather for outside consumption. Told to see Joe
+Ryan as a source of dependable information, a tourist approached Joe and
+asked what kind of temperature one would encounter in the valley.
+
+"Heat is always exaggerated," said Joe. "Of course it gets a little warm
+now and then. Hottest I ever saw was in August when I crossed the valley
+with Mike Lane. I was walking ahead when I heard Mike coughing. I looked
+around. Seemed to be choking and I went back. Mike held out his palm and
+in it was a gold nugget and Mike was madder'n hell. 'My teeth melted,'
+Mike wailed. 'I'm going to kill that dentist. He told me they would
+stand heat up to 500 degrees.'"
+
+I met an engaging liar at Bradbury Well one day. He was gloriously drunk
+and was telling the group about him that he was a great grand-son of the
+fabulous Paul Bunyan.
+
+"Of course," he said, "Gramp was a mighty man, but he was dumb at that.
+One time I saw him put a handful of pebbles in his mouth and blow 'em
+one at a time at a flock of wild geese flying a mile high. He got every
+goose, but how did he end up? Not so good. He straddled the Pacific
+ocean one day and prowled around in China, and saw a cross-eyed
+pigeon-toed midget with buck teeth. Worse, she had a temper that would
+melt pig-iron.
+
+"Gramp went nuts over her. What happened? He married her. She had some
+trained fleas. If Gramp got sassy, she put fleas in his ears and ants in
+his pants and stood by, laughing at him, while he scratched himself to
+death. Hell of an end for Gramp, wasn't it?"
+
+In the late fall, winter, and early spring perfect days are the rule and
+if you are among those who like uncharted trails, do not hurry. Then
+when night comes you will climb a moonbeam and play among the stars. You
+will learn too, that life goes on away from box scores, radio puns, and
+girls with a flair for Veuve Cliquot.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter VII
+                          Indians of the Area
+
+
+The Indians of the Death Valley country were dog eaters--both those of
+Shoshone and Piute origin. Both had undoubtedly degenerated as a result
+of migrations. The Shoshones (Snakes) had originally lived in Idaho,
+Oregon, and Washington. The Piutes in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada.
+
+The true blood connection of coast Indians may well be a matter of
+dispute. "Almost every 15 or 20 leagues you'll find a distinct dialect,"
+was said of California Indians. (Boscana in Robinson's Life in
+California, p. 220.) Most of them were hardly above the animal in
+intelligence or morality. Though the Death Valley Indians are called
+Shoshone and Piutes, to what extent their blood justifies the
+classification is the white man's guess.
+
+Those whom Dr. French found in the Panamint said they had no tribal
+name. Many California tribes were given names by the whites, these names
+being the American's interpretation of a sound uttered by one group to
+designate another. "They do not seem to have any names for themselves."
+(Schoolcraft's Arch., Vol. 3.)
+
+All seem to agree however, that the farther north the Indian lived, the
+more intelligent he was and the better his physique--which would
+indicate a relation to the better diet in the lush, well-watered and
+game-filled valleys and foothills. Some of the women are described by
+early writers as "exceedingly pretty." Others, "flat-faced and pudgy."
+"The Indians in the northern portion ... are vastly superior in stature
+and intellect to those found in the southern part." (Hubbard, Golden
+Era, 1856.)
+
+Certainly those found in Death Valley country reflected in their persons
+and in their character the niggardly land and the struggle for survival
+upon it. They were treacherous as its terrain. Cruel as its cactus.
+Tenacious as its stunted life.
+
+It is interesting to note the range of opinion and the conclusions drawn
+by earlier travelers.
+
+Of the Shoshones: "Very rigid in their morals." (Remi and Brenchley's
+Journal, Vol. 1, p. 85.)
+
+"They of all men are lowest, lying in a state of semi-torpor in holes in
+the ground in winter and in spring, crawling forth and eating grass on
+their hands and knees until able to regain their feet ... living in
+filth ... no bridles on their passions ... surely room for no missing
+links between them and brutes." (Bancroft's Native Races, Vol. 1, p.
+440.)
+
+"It is common practice ... to gamble away their wives and children.... A
+husband will prostitute his wife to a stranger for a trifling present."
+(Ibid. ch. 4, Vol. 1.)
+
+"Our Piute has a peculiar way of getting a foretaste of connubial
+bliss--cohabiting experimentally with his intended for two or three days
+previous to the nuptial ceremony, at the end of which time either party
+can stay further proceedings to indulge further trials until a companion
+more congenial is found." (S. F. Medical Press, Vol. 3, p. 155. See
+also, Lewis and Clark's Travels, p. 307.)
+
+"The Piutes are the most degraded and least intellectual Indians known
+to trappers." (Farnham's Life, p. 336.)
+
+"Pah-utes are undoubtedly the most docile Indians on the continent."
+(Indian Affairs Report, 1859, p. 374.)
+
+"Honest and trustworthy, but lazy and dirty," is said of the Shoshones.
+(Remi and Brenchley's Journal, p. 123.) Some ethnologists declare they
+cannot be identified with any other American tribe.
+
+Wives were purchased, cash or credit. Polygamy prevailed. Unmarried
+women belonged to all, but Gibbs says women bewailed their virginity for
+three days prior to marriage. "They allow but one wife." (Prince in
+California Farmer, Oct. 18, 1861.)
+
+Husbands were allowed to kill their mothers-in-law. The heart of a
+valiant enemy killed in battle was eaten raw or cut into pieces and made
+into soup. Women captives of other tribes were ravished, sold or kept as
+slaves. Some Southern California tribes sold their women and
+occasionally tribes were found without a single squaw.
+
+"They are exceedingly virtuous." (Remi and Brenchley's Journal, Vol. 1,
+pp. 1-23-8.)
+
+"Given to sensual excesses." (Farnham's Travel, p. 62.)
+
+"The Nevada Shoshones are the most pure and uncorrupted aborigines on
+the continent ... scrupulously clean ... chaste." (Prince, California
+Farmer, Oct. 18, 1861.)
+
+Thus the Indian who came or was driven to this wasteland evoked
+conflicting opinions and the real picture is vague.
+
+The lowest of California Indians is believed to have been the Digger,
+so-called because he existed chiefly upon roots and lived in burrows of
+his own making, but his isolation by ethnologists is not convincing. He
+was found around Shoshone by Fremont and Kit Carson and inhabited
+valleys to the north and west, but in the Death Valley region the Piute
+and Shoshone were dominant.
+
+Blood vengeance was deep-rooted. Found with the Indian collection of Dr.
+Simeon Lee at Carson City was a revealing manuscript that tells how
+swiftly it struck.
+
+Mudge rode up to another Indian standing on a Carson City street and
+without warning shot him dead and galloped away. The dead man had two
+cousins working at Lake Tahoe. The murder had occurred at 9:30 a.m. and
+by some means of communication unknown to whites, they were on Mudge's
+trail within two hours and had found him. Mudge promptly killed them
+both and fled again. Sheriff Ulric engaged Captain Johnnie, a Piute, to
+track the slayer. He found Mudge's lair, but Mudge was a sure shot, well
+protected and to rush him meant certain death. The posse decided to keep
+watch until thirst or hunger forced him out. "Me fix um," said Captain
+Johnnie.
+
+He disappeared, but soon returned with an enormous amount of tempting
+food which he contrived to place within easy reach of Mudge. "Him see
+moppyass (food). Eat bellyful and fall down asleep."
+
+That is exactly what happened and old Demi-John, the father of the
+murdered boys crawled stealthily through the sage and with his hunting
+knife severed the head from the sleeping Mudge's body.
+
+In Mono county Piutes killed the Chinese owner of a cafe and fed the
+carcass to their dogs. In court they blandly confessed and justified it,
+claiming the Chinaman had killed and pickled one of their missing
+tribesmen and then sold and served to them portions of the victim as
+"corned beef and cabbage."
+
+For the desert Indian life was raw to the bone. He was an unemotional,
+fatalistic creature as ruthless as the land. In the struggle to live, he
+had acquired endurance and cunning. He knew his desert--its moods, its
+stingy dole, its chary tolerance of life. He knew where the mountain
+sheep hid, the screw-bean grew and the fat lizard crawled. He knew where
+the drop of water seeped from the lone hill. He combed the lower levels
+of the range for chuckwalla, edible snakes, horned toads--anything with
+flesh; stuffed the kill into bags and preserved them for later use. He
+made flour from mesquite beans; stored pi�ons, roots, herbs in his
+desperate fight to survive, and anything that crawled, flew, or walked
+was food. I have seen a squaw squatted beside the carcass of a dog,
+picking out the firmer flesh.
+
+When the Piute came to a spring, the first thing he did was to look
+about for a flat rock which he was sure to find if a member of his tribe
+had previously been there. Kneeling, he would skim the water from the
+surface and dash it upon this rock. Then he smelled the rock. If there
+was an odor of onion or garlic, he knew it contained arsenic and was
+deadly. Naturally, he would be concerned about another water hole. He
+had only to look about him. He would find partially imbedded in the
+earth several stones fixed in the form of a circle not entirely closed.
+The opening pointed in the direction of the next water. The distance to
+that water was indicated by stones inside the circle. There he would
+find for example, three stones pointing toward the opening. He knew that
+each of those stones indicated one "sleep." Therefore he would have to
+sleep three times before he got there. In other words, it was three
+days' journey.
+
+But which of these trails leading to the water should he take? There
+might be several trails converging at the water hole. The matter was
+decided for him. He walked along each of those trails for a few feet.
+Beside one of them he would find an oblong stone. By its shape and
+position he knew that was the trail that led to the next water.
+
+Under such circumstances a man would perhaps wonder if upon arrival at
+the next water hole he would find that water also unfit to use. The
+information was at hand. If, upon top of that oblong stone he found a
+smaller stone placed crosswise and white in color, he knew the water
+would be good water. If a piece of black malpai was there instead of the
+white stone, he knew the next water would be poison also.
+
+Not infrequently he would find other information at the water hole if
+there were boulders about, or chalky cliffs upon which the Indian could
+place his picture writing. If he saw the crude drawing of a lone man, it
+indicated that the land about was uninhabited except by hunters, but if
+upon the pictured torso were marks indicating the breasts of a woman, he
+knew there was a settlement about and he would find squaws and children
+and something to eat.
+
+Frequently other information was left for this wayfaring Indian. Under
+conspicuous stones about, he might find a feather with a hole punched
+through it or one that was notched. The former indicated that one had
+been there who had killed his man. The notch indicated that he had cut a
+throat.
+
+Since there was a difference between the moccasins of Indian tribes, the
+dust about would often inform him whether the buck who went before was
+friend or enemy.
+
+Like all American aborigines, the Piute had his medicine man, but the
+manner of his choosing is not clear. The one selected had to accept the
+role, though the honor never thrilled him, because he knew that when the
+score of death was three against him he would join his lost patients in
+the happy hereafter. Occasionally he was stoned to death by the
+relatives of the first lost patient and with the approval of the rest of
+the tribe. Not infrequently it was believed the medicine man's departed
+spirit then entered the medicine man's kin and they were also butchered
+or stoned to death.
+
+
+Note. Early writers refer to Pau Eutahs, Pah Utes, Paiuches, Pyutes, and
+Paiutes. The word Piute is believed to mean true Ute.
+
+Bancroft claimed the Piutes and Pah Utes were separate tribes, the
+latter being the Trout or Ochi Indians of Walker River; the former the
+Tule (or Toy) Indians of Pyramid Lake.
+
+There was an undetermined number of branches of the original Utah stock.
+Besides the above, there was another tribe called by other Indians,
+Cozaby Piutes, Cozaby being the Indian name of a worm that literally
+covered the shores of Mono Lake. This worm was a principal food of the
+tribe.
+
+Though "Piute" is the spelling justifiably used throughout the region,
+"Pahute" was chosen a few years ago by a group of scholars as the
+preferable form.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter VIII
+                    Desert Gold. Too Many Fractions
+
+
+On the Nevada desert wind-whipped Mount Davidson (or Sun Mountain)
+guided the Forty Niners across the flat Washoe waste. At its foot they
+rested and cursed it because it impeded their progress to the California
+goldfields. Ten years later they rushed back because it had become the
+fabulous Comstock, said to have produced more than $880,000,000, though
+the Nevada State bureau of mines places the figure at $347,892,336. The
+truth lies somewhere between.
+
+"Pancake" Comstock had acquired, more by bluff and cunning than labor,
+title to gold claims others had discovered and cursed a "blue stuff"
+that slowed the recovery of visible particles of gold. Later the "blue
+stuff" was blessed as incredibly rich silver. A mountain of gold and
+silver side by side. It just couldn't be.
+
+A new crop of overnight millionaires. New feet feeling for the first
+step on the social ladder. The Mackays, the Floods, the Fairs, the
+Hearsts.
+
+All this was more like current than twenty year old history to Jim
+Butler on May 18, 1900, when his hungry burro strayed up a hill in
+search of grass. Soon a city stood where the burro ate and soon
+adventurers were poking around in the canyons of Death Valley, 66 miles
+south.
+
+Jim Butler, more rancher than gold hunter was a likable happy-go-lucky
+fellow, who could strum a banjo and sing a song. But when he found the
+burro in Sawtooth Pass he saw a ledge which looked as if it might have
+values. Born in El Dorado county in California in 1855, Butler was more
+or less gold conscious, but unexcited he stuck a few samples in his
+pocket and went on after the burro.
+
+A story survives which states that a half-breed Shoshone Indian known as
+Charles Fisherman had told Butler of the existence of the ore without
+disclosing its location and that Butler was actually searching for it
+when the burro strayed. The preponderance of evidence, however,
+indicates that Butler was en route to Belmont to see his friend, Tasker
+Oddie, who was batching there in a cabin. He gave Oddie one of the
+samples and after his visit, left for home.
+
+Oddie laid the sample on a window sill and forgot it.
+
+In Klondike a few days later, Butler showed another sample to Frank
+Higgs, an assayer. Half in jest he said: "Frank, I've no money to pay
+for an assay, but I'll cut you in on this stuff if it shows anything."
+
+Higgs looked at the sample and returned it to Butler: "Just a waste of
+time. Forget it."
+
+Later in Belmont Henry Broderick, a prospector dropped in for a visit
+with Oddie and noticed the sample Butler had given Oddie and looked it
+over. "This ore has good values," he told Oddie. "It's worth
+investigating." Oddie knew that Broderick's opinion was not to be
+underrated.
+
+Oddie was a young lawyer with little practice and a salary of $100 a
+year as District Attorney. Belmont had a population of 100. Oddie didn't
+have two dollars to risk, but he took the sample to W. C. Gayhart at
+Austin and offered Gayhart a fractional interest if he'd assay it. With
+few customers, Gayhart took a chance.
+
+The ore showed values and Oddie was mildly excited. Butler lived 35
+miles away in wild, difficult country and Oddie wrote him, enclosing the
+assay. Several weeks passed before Butler received the letter. Then
+Butler and his wife returned to Belmont only to find Oddie could not go
+with them. Jim and Mrs. Butler now returned home, loaded provisions,
+tools, and camp equipment in a wagon and three days later, Aug. 26,
+1900, they reached Sawtooth Pass and made camp.
+
+The Butlers staked out eight claims. Jim took for himself the one he
+considered best. He named it The Desert Queen. Mrs. Butler chose another
+and called it Mizpah. Jim located another for Oddie and named it Burro.
+The best proved to be Mrs. Butler's Mizpah.
+
+Returning to Belmont, they found Oddie at home. The matter of recording
+the location notices had to be attended to. "That will cost ten or
+fifteen dollars," Butler said. Neither of them had any money. Wils
+Brougher was recorder of Nye county and Oddie's friend, so Oddie made a
+proposition to Brougher. "If you'll pay the recorder's fees we'll give
+you an eighth."
+
+Brougher said, "Nye county is one of the largest counties in the United
+States, but there are only 400 people in it and I'm not getting many
+fees these days. Leave 'em."
+
+After they'd gone Brougher looked at the assay Oddie had left and
+decided to take a chance. The setup was now: Butler and his wife
+five-eighths, Oddie, Brougher, and Gayhart, one-eighth each.
+
+They managed to pool resources and obtained $25 in cash to provide
+material and provisions.
+
+Brougher, Oddie, Jim, and Mrs. Butler set out in October, 1900. Mrs.
+Butler did the cooking while the men dug, drilled, and blasted two tons
+of ore. The ore was sacked and hauled 150 miles to Austin and shipped to
+a San Francisco smelter. The returns showed high values but still they
+had a major problem--money to develop the claims. Because the country
+had been prospected and pronounced worthless, men of millions were not
+backing a banjo-picking rancher and a young lawyer with no money and few
+clients. The answer was leasing to idle miners willing to gamble muscle
+against money. The venture made many of them rich. The others recovered
+more than wages. As the leases expired the owners took them over.
+
+The camp where Mrs. Butler cooked became the site of the Mizpah Hotel
+and the City of Tonopah and the hill where the burro strayed produced
+many millions.
+
+There are several versions of the Butler discovery and the writer does
+not pretend that his own is the true one. He can only say that he knew
+many of those who were first on the scene and some of those who held the
+first and best leases, and his conclusions are based on their personal
+narratives.
+
+Oddie became one of the moguls of mining, Nevada's governor, and a
+senator of the United States.
+
+Twenty-six miles south of Tonopah was a place known as Grandpa, so named
+because there were always a few old prospectors camped at the water hole
+known as Rabbit Springs. These patriarchs had combed the desert about,
+for years without success.
+
+Al Myers, a prospector working on a hill nearby, came to the Grandpa
+Spring to fill a barrel of water and found his friend, Shorty Harris,
+who had been camping there, packing his burros to leave. "Better hang
+around, Shorty," Al advised. "I'm getting color."
+
+"Luck to you," Shorty laughed. "But any place where these old grandpas
+can't find color, is no place for me."
+
+In six weeks Myers and Tom Murphy made the big strike (1903) and Grandpa
+became Goldfield--one of the West's most spectacular camps. Some of the
+more promising claims of Goldfield were leased, the most valuable being
+that of Hays and Monette, on the Mohawk. In 106 days the lease produced
+$5,000,000.
+
+Out of the Mohawk one car was shipped which yielded over $579,000 and
+ore in all of the better mines was so rich that Goldfield quickly became
+the high-grader's paradise. Though wages at Tonopah were twice those
+paid at Goldfield, miners deserted the older camp for the lower wage and
+made more than the difference by concealing high-grade in the cuffs of
+their overalls or in other ingenious receptacles built into their
+clothing. Miners and muckers took the girls of their choice out of
+honkies and installed them in cottages. More than one of these gorgeous
+creatures, having found her man in her boom-town crib, later ascended
+life's grand stairway to live virtuously and bravely in a Wilshire
+mansion or a swank hotel.
+
+To stop the stealing, a change room was installed but many had already
+secured themselves against want. A wealthy resident of California once
+told me: "With the proceeds of the high-grade I took home I built
+rentals that led to bank connections and more lucky investments.
+Everybody was doing it."
+
+Tex Rickard, a gambler and saloon man, already known in Alaska and San
+Francisco for spectacular adventures, here began his career as a sports
+promoter in the ill-advised Jeffries-Johnson fight.
+
+One morning his Great Northern had more than its usual crowd. Men stood
+three deep at the bar, games were busy and Billy Murray, the cashier was
+rushed. It was not unusual for desert men to leave their money with
+Murray. He would tag and sack it and toss it aside, but today there was
+a steady stream being poked at him. Finally it got in his way and he had
+it taken through the alley to the bank, but the deluge continued.
+
+When it again got in his way, his assistant having stepped out, Billy
+took it to the bank himself. There he learned the reason for the flood
+of money. A run was being made on the John S. Cook bank. He satisfied
+himself that the bank was safe and returned to his cage. As fast as the
+money came in the front door, it went out the back and Billy Murray thus
+saved the bank and the town from collapse.
+
+A resourceful youngster who knew that wherever men recklessly acquire,
+they recklessly spend, dropped in from Oregon, got a job in Tom
+Kendall's Tonopah Club as a dealer. Good looking and likable, he made
+friends, took over the gambling concession and was soon taking over
+Goldfield and the state of Nevada. He was George Wingfield, who, when
+offered a seat in the United States Senate, calmly declined it.
+
+Goldfield is only 40 miles from the northern boundary of Death Valley
+National Monument and was in bonanza when Shorty Harris walked into the
+Great Northern saloon. "I've been drinking gulch likker," he told the
+bartender. "Give me the best in the house."
+
+The bartender reached for a bottle. "This is 100 proof 14 year old
+bourbon."
+
+Shorty drank it, laid a goldpiece on the bar. "Good stuff. I'll have
+another."
+
+"You must be celebrating," the bartender said.
+
+"You guessed it," Shorty said and laid a piece of high-grade beside his
+glass. "I've got more gold where that came from than Uncle Sam's got in
+the mint."
+
+A faro dealer noticed the ore and picked it up. "Good looking rock," he
+said and passed it to a promoter standing by. In a moment a crowd had
+gathered. "Looks like Breyfogle quartz," the promoter said and led
+Shorty aside. "I can make you a million on this. Want to sell?"
+
+"Not on your life," Shorty said, but after pressure and a few drinks, he
+agreed to part with an eighth interest. The deal closed, he left to see
+friends around town. He found each of them in a barroom. News of his
+strike had preceded him and each time he laid the ore on the bar someone
+wanted an interest. Someone called him aside and someone bought the
+drinks.
+
+Within an hour every fortune hunter in Goldfield was looking for Shorty
+Harris, each believing Shorty had found the Lost Breyfogle.
+
+When he left town, weaving in the dust of his burros, sixteen men wished
+him well, for each had a piece of paper conveying a one-eighth interest
+in Shorty's claim.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter IX
+                       Romance Strikes the Parson
+
+
+Scorning Al Myers's advice to locate a claim on the Goldfield hill,
+Shorty Harris headed south, prospecting as he went until he reached
+Monte Beatty's ranch where he camped with Beatty, a squaw man. "I'm
+going to look at a rhyolite formation in the hills four miles west. It
+looks good--that hill," Shorty told him.
+
+"Forget it," Beatty said, "I've combed every inch."
+
+With faith in Beatty's knowledge of the country, he abandoned the trip
+and crossed the Amargosa desert to Daylight Springs, found the country
+full of amateur prospectors excited by the discoveries at Tonopah and
+Goldfield. After a few weeks he decided there was nothing worthwhile to
+be found. "I had a hunch Beatty could be wrong about that formation and
+decided to go back."
+
+He was well outfitted and with five burros and more than enough
+provisions, was ready to go when, out of the bush came a cleancut
+youngster--a novice who had brought his wife along.
+
+"Shorty," he said, "we're out of grub. Can you spare any?"
+
+"Sure. But you'd be better off to go with me. I have enough grub for all
+of us."
+
+Ed Cross had all to gain; nothing to lose by following an experienced
+prospector.
+
+At a water hole known as Buck Springs they made camp. Within an hour
+they went up a canyon, each working a side of it. Shorty broke a piece
+of quartz from an outcropping; saw shades of turquoise and jade. "Come
+a-runnin' Ed," he shouted. "We've got the world by the tail and a
+downhill pull."
+
+They staked out the discovery claims. "How many more should we locate?"
+Cross asked.
+
+"None. Give the other fellow a chance. If this is as good as we think,
+we've got all the money we'll ever need. If it isn't and the other
+fellow makes a good showing it will help us sell this one."
+
+They went to Goldfield. Shorty showed the sample to Bob Montgomery, an
+old friend. Bob was skeptical. But in an hour the news was out and
+Goldfield en masse headed for the new strike. Those, who couldn't get
+conveyances, walked. Some pulled burro carts across the desert. Some
+started out with wheelbarrows. Jack Salsbury began to move lumber.
+Others brought merchandise, barrels of liquor. Everything to build a
+town.
+
+"Specimens of my ore," Shorty said, "were used by Tiffany for ring
+settings, lavallieres, bracelets. It went to Paris and London. Ore
+broken from the ledge sold for $50 a pound. I must have given away
+thousands of dollars' worth of it for souvenirs."
+
+Overnight Rhyolite was born. Shorty bought a barrel of liquor, drove a
+row of nails around the barrel, hung tin dippers on the nails and
+invited the town to quench its thirst. Two railroads came. One, 114
+miles from Las Vegas. Another, 200 miles from Ludlow.
+
+"Two things influenced me in naming it Bullfrog," Shorty said. "Ed had
+asked, 'what'll we name it?' As I looked at the green ore in my hand, a
+frog bellowed. 'Bullfrog,' I said." (One writer has stated erroneously
+that there is not a bullfrog on the desert.)
+
+The tycoons of mining and their agents appeared as if borne on magic
+carpets and in a little while men who would have turned him from their
+doors, were fawning around the little man with the golden smile and the
+ugly brawl for the Bullfrog was on--a struggle between cheap promoters
+who gave him cheap whiskey and moguls who gave him champagne.
+
+Scores of yarns have been written about the sale of the Bullfrog. It was
+one of the few things in Shorty's life which he discussed with reserve.
+In my residence two years before he died and in my presence he told my
+wife, to whom he was singularly devoted, the sordid story. "Cross had a
+good head," Shorty said. "He attended to business, sold his interest and
+retired to a good ranch.
+
+"I woke up one morning and judging from the empties, I must have had a
+grand evening. I reached for a full pint on the table and under it was a
+piece of paper with a note. I read it and learned for the first time
+that I'd sold the Bullfrog."
+
+"The law would have released you from that contract," I said.
+
+"I'd signed it," he answered quietly.
+
+I thought of the crumbling adobe on the Ballarat flat and the lean years
+that followed.
+
+"At that, I got good money for a fellow like me," he added. "I've never
+wanted for anything."
+
+A fortune blown like a bubble meant absolutely nothing--stopped no
+laugh; dimmed no hope; quenched no fire in his eager eyes.
+
+"If I'd got those millions the big boys would have hauled me off to
+town, put a white shirt on me. Maybe they would have made me believe
+Shorty Harris was important. 'Mr. Harris this and Mr. Harris that.' I've
+got something they can't take away. I step out of my cabin every morning
+and look it over--100 miles of outdoors. All mine."
+
+The future of Rhyolite seemed assured when Bob Montgomery sold to
+Charles M. Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel Company, his interest in
+the claim known as the Montgomery Shoshone for more than $2,000,000.
+
+The discovery of this claim has been accredited to Shoshone Johnnie and
+historians have said that Montgomery bought it from Johnnie for a pair
+of overalls, a buggy, and a few dollars. Actually Bob Montgomery was
+among the first on the scene following Shorty's discovery strike and
+located the claim himself. Even if Johnnie had located it Montgomery
+would have been entitled to one-half interest for the reason that he had
+been grubstaking Johnnie for years.
+
+It never paid as a mine, but America was gold mad and the two railroads
+which brought mail for Rhyolite also carried stock certificates out and
+the promoters lost nothing.
+
+The strike at Bullfrog was made in 1904. Rhyolite attained a population
+of about 14,000 at its peak--then started downward. On January 1, 1926,
+I made a camp fire in its empty streets and beside it tried to sleep
+through a biting wind that seemed aptly enough a dirge. The next morning
+I poked around in the abandoned stores to marvel at things of value left
+behind. Chinaware and silver in hurriedly abandoned houses and in the
+leading cafe. The cribs still bore the castoff ribbons and silks of the
+girls and for all I know, the satin slipper which I found on a bed may
+have been the one that Shorty Harris filled with champagne to toast the
+charms of Flaming Jane.
+
+I walked up to the vacant depot. Across the door, through which
+thousands had passed from incoming trains with youth and hope and the
+eagerness of life, lay the long-dead carcass of a cow. It fitted, it
+seemed to me, the scene about.
+
+Like Tonopah, Skidoo on top of Tucki Mountain overlooking Death Valley
+may be accredited to the straying of a burro in 1905.
+
+John Ramsey and John Thompson, two prospectors, camped overnight in
+Emigrant Canyon which leads into Death Valley. The grass about was lush
+and they thought it safe to turn the burros loose. The burros strayed
+during the night and because the walls on the east side of the canyon
+are perpendicular, search was immediately confined to the sloping west
+area. But the burros, always unpredictable, found a way to ascend Tucki
+Mountain and there they were found--one of them actually straddling an
+outcropping of gold.
+
+This happened on the 23rd day of the month and because of a popular
+current slang expression, "Twenty-three for you--skidoo," (meaning
+phooey, or shut up) the claim and the town were named Skidoo.
+
+Bob Montgomery bought the claim on sight. A winding road with a
+spectacular view of Death Valley was built, a mill installed on the side
+of Telephone Canyon and water brought 22 miles from Panamint Canyon. A
+long rambling building on top of the mountain served as offices and
+living quarters for officials. A broad porch encircled it and afforded a
+sweeping and unforgettable view of Death Valley country.
+
+On the area about this building was the company town. Adjoining was "Our
+Town" where the cribs and honkies thrived.
+
+I first visited it with Shorty Harris, holding my breath most of the way
+on the steep, narrow, and winding road. We appropriated the company
+building for our temporary home. Shorty had owned claims there and had
+helped build the road.
+
+Montgomery paid $60,000 for the claims and took out $9,000,000 before
+production costs exceeded his profits, when work was abandoned.
+
+During World War I, Montgomery sold the pipe, which had brought the
+water to Skidoo, to Standard Oil Company at a price far in excess of its
+cost. That was the end of Skidoo.
+
+More interesting to me than the fate of Skidoo was that of Blonde Betty
+and the traveling preacher, of which Shorty was reminded when we
+strolled by the crib in which Betty had lived.
+
+"Skagway Thompson, as fine a chap as ever drew a cork, died right over
+there in that shack and we decided he deserved a nice planting.
+Everybody liked Skagway. Only women around at that time were crib girls
+and they banked his grave with wild flowers and I got this sky pilot to
+say a few words.
+
+"He was a young fellow, good looking and agreeable. I told him Skagway's
+friends thought it would be nice if one of the women in town would sing
+Skagway's favorite song. 'It's called "When the Wedding Bells Are
+Ringing"' I said, 'and I hope you don't mind if it's not in the hymn
+books.' I didn't tell him the girl who was going to sing it was Blonde
+Betty--a chippy--figuring he'd be on his way before he found out. That
+gal could sing like a flock of larks and after the service the preacher
+barged up to me and said he wanted to meet Betty and would I introduce
+him.
+
+"There was no way out and besides, I figured what he didn't know
+wouldn't hurt him. He told her what a wonderful voice she had, how the
+song had touched him and hoped she would sing at one of his meetings.
+
+"Blonde Betty was pretty as curly ribbon and I was afraid every minute
+he was going to ask if he could call on her, so I horned in and said,
+'Parson, excuse me, but I promised I would bring Miss Betty home right
+away.'
+
+"So I took her arm and pulled her away.
+
+"'You big-mouthed bum,' Betty says when we were out of hearing. 'Why
+don't you attend to your own business? I know how to act.'"
+
+Shorty pointed to a riot of wild flowers on the side of a hill across
+the gulch. "The next day I saw her and the Parson picking flowers right
+over there. Of course he didn't know then what she was. After that I
+reckon he didn't give a dam'. He chucked the preaching job and ran off
+with Betty. But maybe God went along. They got married and live over in
+Nevada and you couldn't find a happier family or a finer brood of
+children anywhere.
+
+"It is no argument for sin, but this was a hell of a country in those
+days and you just couldn't always live by the Book."
+
+On July 4, 1905 Shorty Harris made the strike which started the town of
+Harrisburg, now only a name on a signboard. A feud due to a partnership
+of curious origin, started immediately and is worth mention only because
+it confused historians of a later period who, gathering material after
+Shorty's death have given only the story of the feudist who survived
+him.
+
+Here is Shorty's version: "I was trying to save distance by taking the
+Blackwater trail across Death Valley into the Panamint. I had been over
+the country and had seen a formation that looked good and was going back
+to look it over. The Blackwater trail is a wet trail and one of my
+burros sank in the ooze. I had just gotten her out when a fellow I'd
+never seen before, came up. He said he was a stranger in the country and
+he wanted to get to Emigrant Springs where his two partners were
+waiting. He explained that the foreman at Furnace Creek had told him I
+had left only a short while before, but he might overtake me by
+hurrying, and I would show him the way. Then he asked if he could join
+me.
+
+"I told him it was free country and nobody on the square was barred.
+When I reached my destination I showed him the trail to Emigrant
+Springs. I reckon I talked too much on the way over--maybe made him
+think I had a gold mountain. Anyway, he said he believed he would look
+around a little to see what he could find. I didn't even know his name
+and though it was against the unwritten code, he followed me. There
+wasn't anything I could do about it without trouble and I was looking
+for gold--not trouble.
+
+"In 15 minutes I had found gold. He was pecking around a short distance
+away and also found rock with color and claimed a half interest. It was
+then that I learned his name--Pete Auguerreberry and that his partners
+were Flynn and Cavanaugh. Wild Bill Corcoran had grubstaked me. I told
+Pete five partners were too many and we should agree upon a division
+point--each taking a full claim and he could have his choice.
+
+"He refused and wanted half interest in both and nothing short of murder
+would have budged him. I went to Rhyolite for Bill Corcoran. He went for
+his partners. When we met, Corcoran had an offer to buy, sight unseen,
+from one of Schwab's agents. Everyone of us wanted to sell, except Pete
+who stood out for a fantastic price. His partners offered to give him a
+part of their share if he would accept the offer. Pete refused. He
+thought it was worth millions. Wild Bill organized a company and we
+started work."
+
+For awhile it seemed the Harrisburg claims would prove to be good
+producers. In the end it was just another town on the map for Shorty.
+Futile years for Pete.
+
+
+Once I asked Shorty Harris how he obtained his grubstakes. "Grubstakes,"
+he answered, "like gold, are where you find them. Once I was broke in
+Pioche, Nev., and couldn't find a grubstake anywhere. Somebody told me
+that a woman on a ranch a few miles out wanted a man for a few days'
+work. I hoofed it out under a broiling sun, but when I got there, the
+lady said she had no job. I reckon she saw my disappointment and when
+her cat came up and began to mew, she told me the cat had an even dozen
+kittens and she would give me a dollar if I would take 'em down the road
+and kill 'em.
+
+"'It's a deal,' I said. She got 'em in a sack and I started back to
+town. I intended to lug 'em a few miles away and turn 'em loose, because
+I haven't got the heart to kill anything.
+
+"A dozen kittens makes quite a load and I had to sit down pretty often
+to rest. A fellow in a two-horse wagon came along and offered me a ride.
+I picked up the sack and climbed in.
+
+"'Cats, eh?' the fellow said. 'They ought to bring a good price. I was
+in Colorado once. Rats and mice were taking the town. I had a cat. She
+would have a litter every three months. I had no trouble selling them
+cats for ten dollars apiece. Beat a gold mine.'
+
+"There were plenty rats in Pioche and that sack of kittens went like
+hotcakes. One fellow didn't have any money and offered me a goat. I knew
+a fellow who wanted a goat. He lived on the same lot as I did. Name was
+Pete Swain.
+
+"Pete was all lit up when I offered him the goat for fifty dollars. He
+peeled the money off his roll and took the goat into his shack. A few
+days later Pete came to his door and called me over and shoved a fifty
+dollar note into my hands. 'I just wanted you to see what that goat's
+doing,' he said.
+
+"I looked inside. The goat was pulling the cork out of a bottle of
+liquor with his teeth.
+
+"'That goat's drunk as a boiled owl,' Pete said. 'If I ever needed any
+proof that there's something in this idea of the transmigration of
+souls, that goat gives it. He's Jimmy, my old sidekick, who, I figgered
+was dead and buried.'
+
+"'Now listen,' I said. 'Do you mean to tell me you actually believe that
+goat is your old pal, whom you drank with and played with and saw buried
+with your own eyes, right up there on the hill?'
+
+"'Exactly,' Pete shouted, and he peeled off another fifty and gave it to
+me. So, you see, a grubstake, like gold, is where you find it."
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter X
+                   Greenwater--Last of the Boom Towns
+
+
+Located on Black Mountain in the Funeral Range on the east side of Death
+Valley, Greenwater was the last boom town founded in the mad decade
+which followed Jim Butler's strike at Tonopah. Records show locations of
+mining claims in the district as early as 1884, but all were abandoned.
+
+The location notice of a "gold and silver claim" was filed in 1884 by
+Doc Trotter, a famous character of the desert, remembered both for his
+good fellowship and his burro--Honest John--a habitual thief of
+incredible cunning, "Picked locks with baling wire...."
+
+The first location of a copper claim was made by Frank McAllister who,
+with a man named Cooper and Arthur Kunzie, may be credited with one of
+the West's most spectacular mining booms.
+
+In 1905 Phil Creaser and Fred Birney took samples of the Copper Blue
+Ledge and sent them to Patsy Clark, who was so impressed that he
+dispatched Joseph P. Harvey, a prominent mining engineer to look at the
+property. Harvey started from Daggett and had reached Cave Spring in the
+Avawatz Mountains when he was caught in a cloudburst and lost all his
+equipment. He returned to Daggett, secured a new outfit and this time
+reached Black Mountain, but was unable to locate the claims.
+
+Again Birney and Creaser contacted Clark and this time the mining
+magnate came to Rhyolite, ordered another examination of the property,
+giving his agent authority to buy. Upon the assay's showing, the claims
+were bought. Immediately Charles M. Schwab, August Heinze, Tasker L.
+Oddie, Borax Smith, W. A. Clark, and many other moguls of mining hurried
+to the scene or sent their agents. In their wake came gamblers,
+merchants, crib girls, soldiers of fortune, and thugs.
+
+$4,125,000 was paid for 2500 claims. Result--a hectic town with as many
+as 100 people a day pouring out of the canyons onto the barren, windy
+slope.
+
+Noted mining engineers announced that Black Mountain was one huge
+deposit of copper with a thin overlay of rock, dirt, and gravel. "It
+will make Butte's 'Richest Hill on Earth' look like beggars' pickings,"
+they announced.
+
+Greenwater stocks sky-rocketed and so many people poured into the new
+camp that the town was moved two miles from the mines in order to take
+care of the growth which it was believed would soon make it a
+metropolis. Before pick and shovel had made more than a dent on the
+crust of Black Mountain, two newspapers, a bank, express lines, and a
+magazine were in operation.
+
+Here Shorty Harris missed another fortune only because his partner went
+on a drunk.
+
+Leaving Rhyolite, Shorty had induced Judge Decker, a convivial resident
+of Ballarat to furnish a grubstake to look over Black Mountain. He made
+several locations, erected his monuments, returned to Ballarat and gave
+them to Decker to be recorded.
+
+When the papers reached Ballarat with the news that the copper barons
+were bidding recklessly for Greenwater claims Shorty was broke again.
+Bursting into Chris Wicht's saloon, he shouted, "Where's the Judge?"
+
+Chris nodded toward the end of the bar where the Judge, swaying
+slightly, was waving his glass in lieu of a baton while leading the
+quartet in "Sweet Adeline." Wedging through the crowd, Shorty touched
+the Judge's elbow: "Lay off that cooking likker, Judge. It's Mum's Extra
+for us from now on."
+
+"Yeh? How come?" the Judge asked thickly.
+
+"We're worth a billion dollars," Shorty said. "I staked out that whole
+dam' mountain. Where're those location notices?"
+
+"What location notices?" Decker blinked.
+
+"The ones I gave you to take to Independence."
+
+With one hand the Judge steadied himself on the bar. With the other he
+fumbled through his pockets, finally producing a frayed batch of papers,
+covered with barroom doodling, but no recorder's receipt for the
+location notices. "Well, I'll be damned," he muttered.
+
+"So'll I," Shorty gulped.
+
+If Decker had recorded the notices both he and Shorty would have become
+rich through the sale of those claims.
+
+When laborers cleared the ground to begin work for Schwab, Patsy Clark,
+and others, they tore down the monuments containing the unrecorded
+notices.
+
+In a little cemetery on the gravel flats at Ballarat, lies Decker.
+
+Pleasantly refreshed with liquor one yawny afternoon he managed to have
+the last word in an argument with the constable, Henry Pietsch and went
+happily to his room. Later the constable thought of a way to win the
+argument and went to the Judge's cabin. A shot was heard and Pietsch
+came through the door with a smoking gun in his hand. Decker, he said,
+had started for a pistol in his dresser drawer. But Decker was found
+with a hole in his back, his spine severed. At Independence, the
+constable was acquitted for lack of evidence and returned to Ballarat to
+resume his duties, but was told that he might live longer somewhere
+else. Pietsch didn't argue this time and thus avoided a lynching. He
+left Ballarat and, I believe, was hanged for another murder.
+
+Among those who came early to Greenwater, none was more outstanding than
+a gorgeous creature with a wasp waist who stepped from the stage one
+day, patted her pompadour with jewelled fingers, gave the bustling town
+an approving glance. Then she turned to the bevy of blondes and
+brunettes she had brought. "It's a man's town, girls...."
+
+Bystanders were already eyeing the girls; their scarlet lips and the
+deep dark danger in their roving eyes.
+
+So Diamond Tooth Lil was welcomed to Greenwater and became important
+both in its business and social economy.
+
+It was agreed that Lil was a good fellow. Greenwater also learned that
+her word was good as her bond. She kept an orderly five dollar house and
+if anyone chose to break her rules of conduct, he ran afoul of her
+six-gun. Because she could fight like a jungle beast, she was also
+called Tiger Lil. Somewhere along the line, four of her upper teeth had
+been broken and in each of the replacements was set a diamond of first
+quality. As Greenwater prospered so did Diamond Tooth Lil.
+
+One day an exotic creature with a suggestion of Spanish-Creole and dark,
+compelling eyes dropped off the stage. She too had pretty girls and when
+the new bagnio had its grand opening, with champagne and imported
+orchestra, Diamond Tooth Lil sent a huge floral piece.
+
+A few nights later Lil was sitting in her parlor wondering where the men
+were. The girls were all banked around with folded hands.
+
+"Maybe there's a celebration...." A moment later a belated male barged
+in.
+
+"Willie, where's everybody?" Lil asked.
+
+Willie flicked a look at the idle girls. "Maybe," he announced, "they're
+down at that new cut-rate menage."
+
+"Cut-rate?" Lil cried.
+
+"Yeh. Three dollars."
+
+A steely glint came into Diamond Tooth Lil's eyes.
+
+She tossed her cigarette into the cuspidor, went to her room, picked up
+her six-gun, saw that it was loaded and hurried to her rival's.
+
+A rap on the door brought the dark beauty to the porch. "Listen dearie,"
+Diamond Tooth Lil began. "This is a union town. I hear you're scabbing."
+
+The hot Latin temper flared. "I run my business to suit myself...."
+
+"And you won't raise the price?" asked Diamond Tooth Lil.
+
+"Never!" Suddenly the exotic one looked into hard steel and harder eyes.
+
+"Okay. You're through. Start packing," ordered Lil.
+
+Something in the eyes behind the six-gun told the madam that surrender
+was wiser than a funeral and the scab house closed forever.
+
+A wayfarer in Greenwater announced that he was so low he could mount
+stilts and clear a snake's belly, but being broke, he could only sniff
+the liquor-scented air coming from Bill Waters's saloon and look
+wistfully at the bottles on the shelves. Then he noticed that Bill
+Waters was alone, polishing glasses. A sudden inspiration came and he
+sauntered in. "Bill," he said, "gimme a drink...."
+
+Bill Waters was no meticulous interpreter of English and slid a glass
+down the bar. A bottle followed. The drinker filled the glass, poured it
+down an arid throat. "Thanks," he called and started out.
+
+"Hey--" cried Bill Waters. "You haven't paid for that drink."
+
+"Why, I asked you to give me a drink...."
+
+"Yeh," Bill sneered. "Well, brother, you'd better pay."
+
+"Horse feathers--" said the fellow and proceeded toward the door.
+
+Bill Waters picked up a double barrelled shotgun, pointed it at the
+departing guest and pulled the trigger. The jester fell, someone called
+the undertaker and the porter washed the floor.
+
+It looked bad for Bill. But lawyers solve such problems. Bill said he
+was joking and didn't know the gun was loaded. The answer satisfied the
+court and Bill returned to his glasses.
+
+For a few years Greenwater prospered. Then it was noticed that the
+incoming stages had empty seats. Bartenders had more time to polish
+glasses. "The World's Biggest Copper Deposit" which the world's greatest
+experts had assured the moguls lay under the mountain just wasn't there.
+
+Today there is barely a trace of Greenwater. A few bottles gleam in the
+sun. The wind sweeps over from Dante's View or up Dead Man's Canyon. The
+greasewood waves. The rotted leg of a pair of overalls protrudes from
+its covering of sand. A sunbaked shoe lies on its side.
+
+But somewhere under its crust is a case of champagne. Dan Modine, the
+freighter, buried it there one dark night over 40 years ago and was
+never able to find it.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter XI
+                          The Amargosa Country
+
+
+In Hellgate Pass I met Slim again, resting on the roadside, his burro
+browsing nearby. Slim, I may add here, already had a niche in
+Goldfield's hall of fame. He had walked into a gambling house one day
+broke, thirsty, nursing a hangover, and hoping to find a friend who
+would buy him a drink. Though it was a holiday and the place crowded, he
+saw no familiar face, but while waiting he noticed the cashier was busy
+collecting the winnings from the tables. He also noticed that in order
+to save the time it required to unlock the door of the cage, the cashier
+would dump the gold and silver coins on the shelf at his wicker window,
+then for safety's sake, shove it off to fall on the floor inside.
+
+Slim watched the procedure awhile and with a sudden bright idea,
+sauntered out. A few moments later he returned through an alley with an
+auger wrapped in a tow sack, crawled under the house and soon a stream
+of gold and silver was cascading into Slim's hat.
+
+A lookout at a table nearest the cage, hearing a strange metallic noise,
+went outside to investigate and peeking under the floor, saw Slim
+without being seen. It was just too good to keep. Stealthily moving
+away, he spread the news and half of Goldfield was gathered about when
+Slim, his pockets bulging with his loot, crawled out only to face a
+jeering, heckling crowd.
+
+Cornered like a rat in a cage, he couldn't run; he couldn't speak. He
+could only stand and grin and somehow the grin caught the crowd and
+instead of a lynching, Slim was handcuffed and led away and later the
+merciful judge who had been in the crowd declared Goldfield out of
+bounds for Slim and sent him on his way.
+
+At no other place in the world except Goldfield, with its craving for
+life's sunny side, could such an incident have occurred.
+
+After greetings Slim confided that he was en route to a certain canyon,
+the location of which he wouldn't even tell to his mother. There, not a
+cent less than $100,000,000 awaited him. No prospector worthy of the
+name ever bothers to mention a claim of less value. Not sure of the
+roads ahead, I asked him for directions.
+
+"You'd better go down the valley," he advised, pointing to a small black
+cloud above Funeral Range. "Regular cloudburst hatchery--these
+mountains."
+
+At a sudden burst of thunder we flinched and at another the earth seemed
+to tremble. Forked lightning was stabbing the inky blackness and I
+expected to see the mountains fall apart. "Something's got to give,"
+Slim said. "Look at that lightning ... no letup." Another roar rumbled
+and rolled over the valley. "God--" muttered Slim, "I haven't prayed
+since I fell into a mine shaft full of rattlesnakes."
+
+As we watched the incessant play of lightning, Slim told me about his
+fall into the shaft: "Arkansas Ben Brandt was working about 100 yards
+away. Deaf as a lamp post, Ben is, but I kept praying and hollering and
+just when I'd given up, here comes a rope. You can argue with me all day
+but you can't make me believe the Lord didn't unstop old Ben's ears."
+
+Slim gave me a final warning. "Take the road over the mountain when you
+come to the Shoshone sign. When you get there be sure to see Charlie
+before you go any farther."
+
+At every water hole where prospectors were gathered I'd heard someone
+tell someone else to see Charlie. At Furnace Creek I'd heard the vice
+president of the Borax Company tell an official of the Santa Fe railroad
+to see Charlie and only an hour before I met Slim I had stopped to give
+a tire patch to a young miner with a flat. While I waited to see that
+the patch stuck, I learned he was on his way to consult Charlie.
+
+"My helper," he confided, "jumped my claim after he learned I hadn't
+done last year's assessment work. That's legal if a fellow's a skunk but
+when he stole my wife and chased me off with my own shotgun,
+bigod--that's different." I suggested a lawyer. "I'll see Charlie
+first...."
+
+Naturally I became curious about this Charlie, who seemed to be a
+combination of Father Confessor and the Caliph Haroun Alraschid to all
+the desert. "Just who is Charlie?" I asked Slim.
+
+"He runs the store at Shoshone. Tell him I'll be down soon. I want him
+to handle my deal." He slapped his burro and we parted--he for his
+$100,000,000, I to leave the country. Watching the spring in his step a
+moment, I got into my car and knew at last the why of those dark
+alluring canyons that ran up from the hungry land and hid in the hills.
+I knew why there are riches that nothing can take away and why rainbows
+swing low in the sky. The good God had made them so that fellows like
+Slim could climb one and ride.
+
+Driving along I found myself trying to appraise the endless waste. Was
+it a blunder of creation, hell's front yard or God's back stairs? It was
+easy to understand the appeal of vast distances, of desert dawns and
+desert nights but what was it that made men "go desert"?
+
+The answer was becoming clearer. Fellows like Slim had found God in a
+snake hole, or if you prefer--a way of life patterned with infinite
+precision to their needs. It is easy enough to tear into scraps,
+another's formula for happiness and recommend your own but that is an
+egotism that only the fool will flaunt and I began to suspect that the
+Slims and the Shortys had found a freedom for which millions in the
+tired world Outside vainly struggled and slowly died.
+
+  "I wanted the gold, and I got it--
+    Came out with a fortune last fall--
+  Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
+    And somehow the gold isn't all.
+
+  It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
+    It twists you from foe to a friend;
+  It seems it's been since the beginning;
+    It seems it will be to the end."
+                                                  --_Robert W. Service._
+
+Rounding a sharp turn in the road that led over and around a hill
+jutting out from a mountain of black malpai, I saw a sign: "Shoshone"
+and just beyond, a little settlement almost hidden in a thicket of
+mesquite. A sign on a weather-beaten ramshackle building read, "Store."
+A few listing shacks on a naked flat. An abandoned tent house, its torn
+canvas top whipping the rafters in the wind. Whirlwinds spiraling along
+dry washes to vanish in hummocks of sand.
+
+The presence of three or four prospectors strung along a slab bench
+either staring at the ground at their feet or the brown bare mountains,
+only emphasized the depressing solitude and I decided if I had to choose
+between hell and Shoshone I'd take hell.
+
+Reaching the store through deep dust, I guessed correctly that the big
+fellow giving me an appraising look was Charlie. He was slow in his
+movements, slow in his speech and I had the feeling that his keen, calm
+eyes had already counted the number of buttons on my shirt and the
+eyelets in my shoes. I asked about the road to Baker.
+
+"Washed out. Won't be open for two weeks."
+
+"Two weeks?" I gasped. "Long enough to kill a fellow, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, there's a little cemetery handy. Just up the gulch."
+
+Impulsively I thrust out my hand. "Shake. You win. Now that we
+understand each other, have you a cabin for rent for these two weeks?"
+
+"Yes, but you'd better take it longer," he chuckled. "In two weeks
+you'll be a native and won't want to get out."
+
+The showing of the cabin was delayed by a lanky individual who was
+pawing over a pile of shoes. "Charlie, soles on my shoes are worn
+through. These any good?"
+
+"Not worth a dam'," Charlie said. He picked up hammer and nails, handed
+them to the lanky one. "Some old tires outside. Cut off a piece and tack
+it on. I'll have some good shoes next time you're in."
+
+A miner in an ancient pickup stopped for gas. As Brown filled the tank
+he noticed a tire dangerously worn. "Blackie, you need a new casing to
+get across Death Valley."
+
+"These'll do," Blackie answered as he dug into all his pockets, paid for
+the gas and got into the car.
+
+"Wait a minute," Brown said and in a moment he was rolling a new tire
+out, lifting it to the bed of the pickup. He handed Blackie a new tube.
+"If you use them, pay me. If you don't, bring 'em back."
+
+Blackie regarded him a moment. "How'd you know I was broke?" he grinned,
+and chugged away.
+
+A man stopped a truck in front of the door, came in and asked how far it
+was to Furnace Creek. Charlie looked him over, then glanced at the
+truck. "Fifty-eight miles the short way. Nearly 80 the other. You'll
+have to take the long way."
+
+"Why?" the fellow bristled.
+
+"Your load is too high for the underpass on the short route. Road's
+washed out anyway."
+
+The man frowned and turned to go.
+
+"Wait a minute," Charlie called. He reached for a sack of flour, laid it
+on a counter. Then he stood a slab of bacon on its edge and cut off a
+chunk. "You'll stop at Bradbury Well--"
+
+"I won't stop nowhere," the truckman said.
+
+"You'll have to. Your radiator will be boiling." He got a carton, put
+the flour and bacon in it and reaching on a shelf behind, got coffee,
+sugar, and canned milk and put these in. "Old Dobe Charlie Nels is
+camped there. Poor old fellow hasn't been in for two weeks...."
+
+The man looked at Charlie, uncertain. "You want me to drop it off, huh?"
+
+"Yes," Charlie said and lugging the carton to the truck, he shoved it
+in.
+
+With squinted eyes the driver watched. "Mister, I'll surely fill up here
+on my way back," and with a friendly wave, climbed into his cab and I
+began to understand why all over the desert I'd heard of Charlie.
+
+The cabin assigned me was the usual box type, shaded by the overhanging
+branches of a screwbean mesquite.
+
+"Cabin's not much," Charlie said, "but you'll have a Beauty Rest
+mattress to sleep on. My wife says folks'll put up with most anything if
+they have a good bed." He looked the room over and I noticed that
+nothing escaped him. Wood and kindling. Oil in the lamp. Water in the
+pitcher--an ornate vessel with enormous roses edged with gilt. He opened
+a closet door, saw that the matching vessel was in place and went out.
+After arranging my belongings, with time to kill, I returned to the
+store, hoping to learn something about nearby trails.
+
+A short woman who preceded me slammed a can of coffee on the counter,
+removed her long cigarette holder, blew a ring of smoke at the ceiling
+and asked Charlie where he got the coffee. He told her that it came in a
+shipment.
+
+"Well bigod, you send it back."
+
+Charlie laughed and turned to me: "This is Myra Benson. You want to stay
+on the good side of Myra. She has charge of the dining room."
+
+My remark that good coffee was my early morning weakness led to an
+invitation to sample her brew. "Mine too," she said. "The pot's on the
+stove before daylight, if you're up that early."
+
+I soon discovered that Myra's language was just a bit of color Death
+Valley imparts to speech, for she was deeply religious if not in all its
+forms, in all of its essentials and the occasional use of a two-fisted
+phrase did not in the least detract from the eternal feminine of one of
+Death Valley's most remarkable women.
+
+Guided by the light in her kitchen, I joined her the next morning while
+Shoshone still slept, and over a delicious cup learned something about
+people and places.
+
+The man with the wide Stetson was Dan Modine, deputy sheriff. Liked
+poker. The quiet, squat fellow with the blue pop eyes was Billy de Von.
+"College man. Works on the roads. Taught in the University of Mexico
+before he came here. Siberian Red? Oh, that's Ernie Huhn. No place on
+Godamighty's earth he hasn't been. As soon bet $1000 as two bits on a
+pair of jacks."
+
+"The tall thin fellow they called Sam? Must be Sam Flake. Here before
+Noah built the ark."
+
+Knowing that Mormons had pioneered in the area, I was curious about an
+undersized man pushing an oversize baby carriage loaded with infants and
+a dozen youngsters trailing him. "Does he happen to be one of the
+Faithful who has clung to his wives?" I asked.
+
+"That's Eddie Main," Myra laughed. "Bachelor. Just loves kids. He was
+born in San Francisco in the days when a nickel just wasn't counted
+unless it had a dime alongside. His folks sent him to New York to be
+educated. Eddie didn't like it. 'It's a nickel town,' Eddie said.
+'Cheapest hole on earth.' He came to the desert and the desert took him
+over. When he's not hauling kids around he's reading. Don't get out on a
+limb in an argument with Eddie. You'll lose sure. Every now and then
+Eddie goes East for a vacation. It's awful on the mothers. They have to
+take care of their own children and the children want Eddie."
+
+"Who is Hank, the fellow that came in with the pickup Ford?" I asked.
+
+"Our bootlegger. Comes Wednesdays and Saturdays. Regular as a bread
+route. Always tell when he's due. Bench is crowded. Didn't you notice
+the tarpaulin over his truck? Always two kegs and a sack of empty pints
+and quarts. Rough roads here. Siphons out what you want. Death Valley
+Scotty? Around yesterday. Lit up like a barn afire." The short man with
+the black whiskers was Henry Ashford who, with his brothers Harold and
+Rudolph owned the Ashford mine.
+
+"How does such a little store in a place like this make a living for the
+Browns?"
+
+"I wonder myself, at times," she said. "Everybody around here takes
+their troubles to Charlie or Stella. Maybe you noticed their home--the
+cottage with the screen porch a few steps from the store. Stella was
+telling me yesterday she needed a new carpet for her living room. I
+said, 'I'm not surprised. You're running a nursery, emergency hospital,
+and a domestic relations court.' Sometimes young couples find their
+marriage going on the rocks. The woman goes to Stella to get the kinks
+out. As for Charlie, if you're around long enough you'll see him most
+every morning strolling over to the shacks in the jungle or up to the
+dugouts in Dublin Gulch. He thinks nobody knows what he's doing or maybe
+they figure he's just taking a walk. I know. Some of these old fellows
+are always in a bad way. Just last week Charlie came in here and told me
+to send something a sick man could eat over to old Jim. 'I'll have to
+take him to the hospital soon as I can get my car ready,' he said. Three
+hundred miles--that trip.
+
+"And there's Phil. You'll see him around. Fine steady chap. Lost his job
+when the mine he worked in shut down. Long as he was working he was the
+first in the dining room when I opened the door. He began to miss a
+breakfast, then a dinner, and finally he didn't show up at all. I
+supposed he was cooking his own and didn't mention it. Kept his chin up.
+You could hear him laughing loud as anybody on the bench, but Charlie
+noticed that once a day Phil would follow his nose over into the
+mesquite where somebody was sure to share a mulligan stew.
+
+"One day when Phil was sitting alone on the woodpile just outside my
+kitchen, Charlie sat down beside him. They didn't know I was there.
+'Phil,' Charlie says, 'the ditch that carries the runoff up at the
+spring needs widening. Could you spare a few days to put it in shape?'
+
+"Phil left that bench running, got a pick and shovel and went singing up
+the road and to this day he doesn't know that Charlie just created that
+job so he could eat."
+
+I mentioned the fellow with black hair and blue eyes. "He complained of
+rheumatism and slapped his knees a lot."
+
+"Oh, that's Dutch Barr. It isn't rheumatism. Just a sign he's going on a
+drunk."
+
+The lanky man with the blond eyebrows and sombre face which lighted so
+easily to laugh, was Whitey Bill McGarn. "... Never had a worry in his
+life...."
+
+I learned also that the mountain of malpai which lifts above Shoshone
+was a burial place for a race of Indians antedating the Piutes and
+Shoshones. "They buried their dead in a crouching position on their
+knees, elbows bent, hands at their ears. Old Nancy, who was Sam Yundt's
+squaw wife before he got rich, says they were buried that way so they
+would be ready to go quick when the Great Spirit called."
+
+The first rose of dawn was in the sky when I left Myra. "You'll have
+time enough to look around before breakfast," she told me and
+recommended a view of the valley from the flat-topped mesa above my
+cabin. "You can reach the top by climbing up a gully and holding on to
+the greasewood. You can see the dugouts in Dublin Gulch too. Some real
+old timers live there."
+
+A sweeping view of the little valley rewarded the climb.
+
+Below, Shoshone lay, tucked away in the mesquite. No honking horns, no
+clanging cars. No swollen ankles dragging muted chains to bench or
+counter, desk or machine. Soon faint spirals of smoke leaned from the
+shanties. Shoshone was awakening. It would wash its face on a slab
+bench, eat its bacon and eggs, and somebody would go out to look for two
+million dollars.
+
+After breakfast, I joined the old timers on the bench. "No--nothing
+exciting happens around here," Joe Ryan told me and stopped whittling to
+look at a car coming up the road. A moment later the car stopped at the
+gas pump and three smartly tailored men stepped out. I heard one say,
+"Odd looking lot on that bench, aren't they?" Then Joe said to the
+fellow at his side, "Queer looking birds, ain't they?"
+
+"How much is gas?" one of the tourists asked.
+
+"Thirty cents," Charlie said.
+
+"Why, it's only 18 in the city," the man flared. "How far is it to the
+next gas?"
+
+Charlie told him, and Big Dan sitting beside me muttered: "Dam' fool'll
+pay 50 cents up there."
+
+The driver climbed into the car and Charlie asked if he had plenty of
+water.
+
+"A gallon can full...."
+
+"Not enough," Charlie warned.
+
+A fellow in the back seat spoke, "Aw, go on. He wants to sell a
+canteen...."
+
+As the car pulled out, Joe called to Charlie: "You're sold out of
+canteens, ain't you?"
+
+"Yes. But I was going to give him one of those old five gallon cans on
+the dump." He went inside and Joe Ryan said, "Won't get far on a gallon
+of water." He waved his knife toward the little cemetery at the mouth of
+the gulch. "Lot of smart Alecs like him up there, that Charlie dragged
+in offa the desert."
+
+It was five days almost to the hour when Ann Cowboy, a Piute squaw came
+to the store with an Indian boy who couldn't speak English; nodded at
+the boy and said to Charlie: "Him see...." She pointed to the big black
+mountain of malpai above Shoshone, whirled her finger in a circle, shot
+it this way and that, then patted the floor. "You savvy?"
+
+Her dark eyes watched Charlie's and when she had finished Charlie called
+Joe Ryan and together they went across the road, climbed into a pickup
+truck and left in a hurry. Even I understood that somebody on the other
+side of that mountain was in trouble, but I had no idea that in three or
+four hours the pickup would return with a cadaver under a tarpaulin and
+a thirst-crazed survivor whose distorted features bore little
+resemblance to those of man.
+
+Big Dan helped lift the victim from the truck. "There were three," Dan
+said. "Where is the other fellow?"
+
+"We looked all over," Joe shrugged.
+
+"The one that's missing," Dan said, "is the fellow that griped about the
+canteen. I remember his black hair."
+
+They carried the still-living man over to Charlie's house and left him
+to the ministrations of the capable Stella. Charlie returned to the
+store, got a pick and shovel from a rack, handed one to Ben Brandt and
+one to Cranky Casey. Not a word was spoken to them. They took the tools
+and started toward the little cemetery at the mouth of Dublin Gulch.
+
+I joined Dan on the bench. "Well," Dan said, "they saved the price of a
+canteen."
+
+
+Two spinsters--teachers of zoology in a fashionable eastern school for
+girls--came in search of a place they called Metbury Springs. Brown told
+them there were no such springs in the Death Valley region. Obviously
+disappointed, one produced a map, spread it on the counter, ran her
+finger over a maze of notes and looking up asked what sort of rats lived
+about Shoshone. Charlie told them that very few rats survived their
+natural enemies and were seldom seen.
+
+"What do they look like?" the teacher asked.
+
+"Just regular rats," Charlie told her.
+
+Again she consulted her notes. "Do you mean to say the only rat you've
+seen here is _Mus decumanus_?"
+
+"Mus who?" Charlie asked. "Only rats around here besides the two-legged
+kind are just plain everyday rats."
+
+The ladies gathered up their papers, went outside, looked over the
+hills, consulted their maps, and returned to Brown. "Sir, this is
+Metbury Spring," one announced, "and for your own information we may add
+that in no other place in the world is there a rat like the one you have
+here."
+
+The amazing feature of this incident is that it is true. The rats in
+some unexplained way had disappeared.
+
+The spinsters remained for weeks but failed to find the specimen they
+sought, but Charlie learned that the first man known to have settled at
+Shoshone was a man named Brown and Shoshone's first name was Metbury
+Spring.
+
+
+Death came to Shoshone that week-end. George Hoagland, prospector,
+reached Trail's End. Charlie announced the news to the bench and asked
+for volunteers to dig the grave. Bob Johnson, another prospector, jumped
+up. "I'll help."
+
+The others gave Bob a quick look and exchanged slow ones with each
+other, because it was known that Bob had not liked Hoagland. "I've been
+in lots of deals with that bastard," he had often said. "Came out loser
+every time. Always left himself a hole to wiggle out of."
+
+Right or wrong, Bob's opinion was shared by many. Herman Jones glanced
+after Bob, now going for a pick and shovel. "That's sure white of Bob,
+forgetting his grudge," Herman said and all Shoshone approved.
+
+I joined the little group that filed up to the cemetery at the mouth of
+the gulch for the graveside ceremony. We stood about waiting for the box
+that contained all there was of George.
+
+They take death on the desert just as they do any other grim fact of
+nature. They talked of George and the hard, chalky earth Bob had to dig
+through in the hot sun. There were mild arguments about whose bones lay
+under this or that unmarked grave. "Dad Fairbanks brought that fellow
+in...." "No such thing. That's Tillie Younger--member of Jesse James's
+gang. I helped bury him...."
+
+Presently there was a stir and I saw Charlie over where the women were.
+He had another chore and was doing it because there was no one else to
+do it.
+
+"Usually reads a coupla verses," Joe Ryan told me. "But somebody stole
+the only Bible in Shoshone."
+
+The box was lowered, the grave filled and Charlie stepped forward. He
+held his hat well up in front of his chest and I suspected that he had a
+few notes pasted in the hat. Those about were listening intently as
+people will to one who has something to say and says it in a few words.
+
+Suddenly I was conscious of mumbling and the tramping of earth and
+seeing Brown flick a glance out of the corner of his eye toward the
+disturbing sound, I turned to see Bob Johnson jumping up and down on the
+earth that filled the grave--careful to miss no inch of it. When he had
+tamped it sufficiently he stepped aside and muttered angrily: "Now dam'
+you--let's see you wiggle out of this hole!"
+
+Yet, when the hills are covered with wild flowers one may see on the
+unsodded graves of the little cemetery a bottle or a tin can filled with
+sun cups or baby blue eyes and in the dust the tracks of a hobnailed
+shoe.
+
+I soon discovered the bench was more than a slab of wood. It was a state
+of Hallelujah. For the most part those who gathered there were a silent
+lot, but as one unshaven ancient told me, "Too damned much talk in the
+world. Two-three words are plenty--like yes, naw, and dam'." Some of
+them had beaten trails from Crede or Cripple Creek, Virginia City or
+Bodie. "It's a clean life and clean money," was an expression that ran
+like a formula through their conversation.
+
+"Of course, few keep the money they get," Joe Ryan said. "Jack Morissey
+couldn't read or write. He struck it rich. Bought a diamond-studded
+watch and couldn't even tell the time of day. Went to Europe; hit all
+the high spots; came back and died in the poor house. But he had his
+fun, which makes more sense than what Nat Crede did. He hit it rich.
+Built a town and a palace. Then blew his brains out and left all his
+millions to a Los Angeles foundling."
+
+One oldster remembered Eilly Orrum of Virginia City. "She had followed
+the covered wagons and made a living washing our clothes, but she got
+into our hearts. Everybody liked her. Some say she forgot to get a
+divorce from her second husband before she married Sandy Bowers. Nobody
+blamed her. She and Sandy ran a beanery. Eilly would feed anybody on the
+cuff. John Rodgers ran up a board bill and couldn't pay it. He had a few
+shares in a no-count claim and talked Eilly into taking the shares to
+settle the bill.
+
+"Within two weeks Eilly was getting $20,000 a month from that deal. It
+wasn't long before she was giggling happily and telling everybody she
+didn't see how folks could live on less than $100,000 a year."
+
+"Julia Bulette? Ran a snooty fancy house. But she taught Virginia City
+how to eat and what, and soon the rich fellows wouldn't stand for
+anything except the world's best foods."
+
+"Oh yes, everybody knew Old Virginny. Gave the town its name. Always
+drunk. Discovered the Ophir. Swapped it for a mustang pony and a pint of
+likker to old Pancake Comstock. When he sobered up he discovered the
+pony was blind. Pancake swapped an eighth interest in the Ophir to a
+Mexican, Gabriel Maldonado, for two burros. The Mexican took out
+$6,000,000. Pancake was quite a lady-killer. Ran away with a miner's
+wife. Fellow was glad to get rid of her, but decided he'd beat hell out
+of Pancake. Found him in new diggings nearby and jumped him. 'You don't
+want her,' Pancake says. 'Be reasonable. I'll buy her.'
+
+"They haggled awhile and the fellow agreed to accept $50 and a plug
+horse. He took the money and started for the horse.
+
+"'Wait a minute,' Pancake says, 'I want a bill of sale,' and wrote it
+out on the spot, and made the fellow sign it. Didn't keep her long
+though. She ran away with a tramp fiddler. The Comstock Lode produced
+over a billion dollars. He might have had a fifth of that. Just too
+smart for his own good. Finally paid the price. Found him on the trail
+one day. Brains blowed out. Suicide."
+
+Dobe Charlie Nels was at Bodie, rendezvous of the toughest of the bad
+men when the United States Hotel rented its rooms in six-hour shifts and
+guests were awakened at the end of that period to make places for
+others. He recalled Eleanor Dumont, whose deft fingers dealt four kings
+to the unwary and four aces to herself. Smitten lovers had shot it out
+for her favors on the Mother Lode and on the Comstock, but when life and
+love still were fair, fate played a scurvy trick on the beauteous
+Eleanor. The shadow of a little down began to show on her lip and
+darkened with the years and so she became Madame Moustache. "She just
+got tired living and one night she went outside, swallowed a little
+pellet and passed the deal to God."
+
+But the charmers of Bodie and its bad men and the millions its hills
+produced were not so deeply etched on his memory as the job he lost
+because he did it well. Hungry and broke when he arrived he took the
+first job offered--stacking cord wood.
+
+"It was a job I really knew. The boss drove stakes 4x8 feet alongside a
+mountain of cut wood. I figured I had a long job. He left and I took
+pains to make every cord level on top, sides even. When the boss came
+back he blew up, kicked over my piles and wanted to know if I was trying
+to ruin him. 'If you'd picked out a few crooked sticks and crossed a few
+straight ones, you could have made a cord with half the wood. Get out
+and don't come back.'" Charlie also had a story of a memorable night.
+
+A bartender in one of Bodie's better saloons was putting his stock in
+order after a busy night when three celebrants in swallow tails and
+toppers came unsteadily through the doors. The two on the outside were
+gallantly steadying the one in the center as they led him to the bar.
+The bartender smiled understandingly when, coming for their orders, he
+noticed the center man's head was pillowed on his arms over the bar, his
+topper lying on its side in front of his face. Recalling that the fellow
+had consumed often and eagerly but had paid for none in an earlier
+session, he nodded at the silent one: "Shall I count him out?"
+
+"Oh no. Bill's buying this time."
+
+The drinks served, the bartender left to attend another late patron and
+moments passed before he returned to find Bill just as he had left him,
+but alone--his drink untouched. He tapped Bill's shoulder and asked
+payment for the drinks. When three taps and three demands brought no
+answer, he picked up a bung starter; went around the counter, seized
+Bill by the shoulder, wheeled him around only to discover that Bill was
+dead. Startled and panicky, the bartender now ran to the door, saw
+Bill's friends weaving up the street and ran after them, told them
+excitedly that Bill had croaked.
+
+"Oh," one said thickly. "Bill's ticker jammed in our room an hour ago.
+His last words were, 'Fellows, I want you to have a drink on me.'
+Couldn't refuse old Bill's last request."
+
+When Dobe Charlie had finished this story he turned to a clear-eyed
+ancient standing nearby. "Jim, I reckon you'd call me a
+Johnny-come-lately since you were a Forty-Niner."
+
+"No," Jim said. "I was 12 when I came to Hangtown. I remember a fellow
+they called Wheelbarrow John, because he made a better wheelbarrow than
+anyone else. He saved $3000 and went back East. He was John Studebaker.
+Made wagons first. Then autos.
+
+"Young fellow named Phil Armour came. No luck. Pulled out. He did all
+right in Chicago though. Founded Armour Company.
+
+"Did I ever tell you about the Digger Ounce? No? Well, it's history. The
+Digger Indians didn't know what gold was. Actually they'd been throwing
+nuggets at rabbits and couldn't believe their eyes when they saw miners
+exchange the same stuff for food and clothing at the store. The Indians
+had been getting it along the stream beds for ages. So they came in with
+their buckskin loin bags full of it. The merchant took it all right, but
+when he balanced his scales, he used a weight that gave the Digger only
+one dollar for every five he was entitled to. Then the Indian had to pay
+three prices for everything he bought. One miner loafing around the
+store, followed the Diggers one day, learned where they were getting it
+and cleaned up $40,000 in no time. That's history too.
+
+"Crooked merchants used the same trick on drunken whites and anybody
+else who didn't keep their eyes open. So the Digger Ounce became a
+byword all along the Mother Lode."
+
+But of all the stories about the Comstock this fine old gentleman told
+us, I like best one about Joe Plato. Young, strong, and handsome as
+Apollo, Joe craved a fling after months of toil in the gulches with no
+sight of woman other than the flat-faced Washoe squaws.
+
+In San Francisco Joe saw a big red apple and he wanted it. A
+breath-taking girl sold him the apple and he wanted her. He acquired the
+girl also. His gambols over, Joe handed her five shares of ten he owned
+in a Comstock claim. 'A little token,' he grinned, never dreaming the
+beautiful wanton had a heart and loved him madly. So he forgot her. She
+didn't forget Joe.
+
+Months later the ten shares were worth on the market $1,000,000. Joe
+remembered then. 'Too much for a girl like that.'
+
+To beat the news and retrieve the stock, he braved Sierra storms, found
+her. In the battle of wits she played her cards superbly. "Of course,"
+she said at last, "... if we were married...."
+
+So the beaten Joe faced the preacher.
+
+When Joe Plato died she took her millions to San Francisco, married a
+rich merchant, became a social leader and the mother of nabobs.
+
+
+One morning at breakfast Myra informed me that I could get to Bradbury
+Well, a famous landmark on the road to Death Valley. To break the
+routine, I went. The route leads over Salsbury Pass, named for Jack
+Salsbury--a congenital promoter who was forever hunting something to
+promote. He had made and lost fortunes in cattle, lumber, and mines and
+for a while lived at Shoshone.
+
+In a ravine near Bradbury Well were two or three dugouts. In one was the
+ubiquitous Rocky Mountain George--lean, seamed, and soft voiced. On the
+box he used for a table lay a letter mailed in Denver and bearing this
+address: "Rocky Mountain George, Nevada." Known all over the gold belt,
+a dozen postmasters had sent it from town to town and now it had caught
+up with George.
+
+Meeting George a few weeks later in Beatty I recalled our meeting. He
+hadn't shaved in a week and his torn overalls were covered with grime. A
+well-tailored gentleman came out of the hotel across the street and
+stepped into a smart car. "Hey, Jim--" George called. "Come over here a
+minute...." The man left his car and walked over. "Jim, I want you to
+meet my friend...." Jim and I shook hands. "Jim's our governor," George
+added and I looked again at Nevada's Governor James Scrugham, later its
+U. S. Senator. For an hour he and George talked of canyons in which,
+they decided, somebody would find a billion dollars and I decided
+Democracy was safe on the desert.
+
+Walking up the wash from George's dugout I was surprised to see a slim
+blonde with blue eyes and a nice smile. Obviously she had just left her
+stove, for she had a steaming pot of coffee in her hand. I made some
+inane remark about the beauty of the morning.
+
+"It's nearly always like this," she said and after a moment I was
+sitting on the bench outside the dugout sipping coffee. I learned that
+her name was Helen. "Why shouldn't I try prospecting? I've nothing to
+lose. I had a job clerking, but I just couldn't scrimp enough to pay for
+medicine and the doctors' bills."
+
+That and the telltale spot on her cheek seemed reason enough for her
+presence and, as she explained, "I might make a strike."
+
+Later in Beatty, I noticed a small crowd about the office of Judge W. B.
+Gray, Beatty's marrying Justice, who was also interested in mines.
+"What's the riot?" I asked Rocky Mountain George, who was whittling on
+the bench beside me. "Helen made a big strike," he told me and I hurried
+over and met her coming out--radiant and excited.
+
+"I've just heard of your strike," I said. "Where did you make it?"
+
+"Right in that wash," she laughed. "He came along one day and--well, we
+just got to liking each other and--" She paused to introduce me to a
+good looking clean-cut fellow and added: "So we just up and married."
+
+The population of Beatty had so changed in one generation that in 1949
+when the town wanted to put on a celebration, not a citizen could be
+found who knew Beatty's first name. Finally a former acquaintance was
+located at Long Beach who advised a booster group that the name of its
+founder was William Martin Beatty. The gentleman is mistaken. Beatty's
+first name was Montelius and was called Monte by all old timers.
+
+A feature of social life in Shoshone was the Snake House--an
+unbelievable structure made of shook from apple crates, scraps of
+corrugated iron found in the dump, tin cut from oil cans, and cardboard
+from packing cartons, which because of scant rainfall, served almost as
+well as wood or iron.
+
+A fellow comes in from the hills, craves relaxation and finds it in the
+Snake House. Though he never plays poker, Eddie Main who lived a few
+yards away was induced to function as a sort of Managing Director, to
+see that the game remained a gentleman's game.
+
+Inside, swinging from the roof is a Coleman lantern and under it a big
+round table covered with a blanket stretched tight and tacked under the
+edges. A rack of chips. Chairs for players and kegs and beer crates for
+spectators. A stove in the corner furnishes heat when needed. If you
+limit your poker to penny ante, the game is not for you. I have seen
+more than $1000 in the pots and large bets are the rule.
+
+One night Sam Flake who has been in Death Valley country longer than any
+living man, joined the game. Sam, a student of poker, ran afoul of four
+queens and went home broke. The next day as he worked in a mine tunnel,
+Sam was holding a post mortem over his disaster. He went over his play
+point by point. Like many a desert man used to solitude, Sam
+occasionally talked to himself aloud, And unaware that Whitey Bill
+McGarn was in a stope just above him, Sam diagnosed his loss: "I opened
+right. I anted right. I bet right. I called right. Can't be but one
+answer. I was sitting in the wrong seat." (Sam Flake died suddenly at
+Tecopa Hot Springs in 1949.)
+
+The village of Tecopa is 11 miles south of Shoshone. When the railroad
+was built stations were given names of local significance and this
+honors the Indian chief, Cap Tecopa.
+
+Important discoveries of gold, silver, lead, and talc were made and are
+still being worked. In the early days murders of both whites and
+Indians, without any clues were of frequent occurrence. Someone recalled
+that every killing of an Indian by a white man had been followed by a
+white man's murder.
+
+The Piute believed in blood atonement and when a young American was
+found butchered in the Ibex hills, friends of the deceased went to Cap
+Tecopa with evidence which indicated the murder was committed by Cap's
+tribesmen. "We want these killings stopped," they told him heatedly.
+
+Cap denied any knowledge of the crime and brushed aside the suggestion
+that he produce the assassin. "Too many Indians," Cap said. "But if you
+help, I can stop the killings."
+
+"How?" they demanded.
+
+"You tell hiko no kill Indian. I tell Indian no kill hiko."
+
+Cap Tecopa was a good prospector and owned a coveted claim which he
+refused to sell.
+
+Among the fortune seekers was a flashily dressed individual who wore a
+tall silk topper. The beegum fascinated Cap and he wanted it. He
+followed the wearer about, his eyes never leaving the shiny headgear. At
+last the urge to possess was irresistible and he approached the owner. A
+lean finger gingerly touched the sacred brim. "How much?"
+
+All he got was a shake of the head. Failure only stimulated Tecopa's
+desire. His money refused, Cap in his desperation thought of the claim
+which the cunning of the promoters, the wiles of gamblers, the pleas of
+friends had failed to get.
+
+The owner of the hat annoyed by Tecopa, decided to get rid of him. "You
+take hat. I take claim."
+
+The Indian reached for the topper. "Take um," he grunted and the deal
+was made. Several other versions of this story are recalled by old
+timers.
+
+The Tecopa Hot Springs were highly esteemed by the desert Indian, who
+always advertised the waters he believed to have medicinal value. In the
+Coso Range he used the walls of a canyon approaching the springs for his
+message. The crude drawing of a man was pictured, shoulders bent,
+leaning heavily on a stick. Another showed the same man leaving the
+springs but now walking erect, his stick abandoned.
+
+The Tecopa Springs are about one and a half miles north of Tecopa and
+furnish an astounding example of rumor's far-reaching power. Originally
+there was only one spring and when I first saw it, it was a round pool
+about eight feet in diameter, three feet deep and so hidden by tules
+that one might pass within a few feet of it unaware of its existence.
+The singularly clear water seeped from a barren hill. About, is a
+blinding white crust of boron and alkali. There Ann Cowboy used to lead
+Mary Shoofly, to stay the blindness that threatened Mary Shoofly's
+failing eyes. When the whites discovered the spring, the Indians
+abandoned it.
+
+Later it became a community bath tub and laundry. Prospectors would
+"hoof" it for miles to do their washing because the water was hot--112
+degrees, and the borax content assured easy cleansing. Husbands and
+wives began to go for baths and someone hauled in a few pieces of
+corrugated iron and made blinds behind which they bathed in the nude. A
+garment was hung on the blind as a sign of occupation and it is a
+tribute to the chivalry of desert men that they always stopped a few
+hundred feet away to look for that garment, and advanced only when it
+was removed.
+
+Today you will see two new structures at the spring and long lines of
+bathers living in trailers parked nearby. They are victims of arthritis,
+rheumatism, swollen feet, or something that had baffled physicians,
+patent medicines, and quacks. They come from every part of the country.
+Somebody has told them that somebody else had been cured at a little
+spring on the desert between Shoshone and Tecopa.
+
+Some live under blankets, cook in a tin can over bits of wood hoarded
+like gold, for the vicinity is bare of growth. It is government land and
+space is free. Some camp on the bare ground without tent, the soft silt
+their only bed. "Something ails my blood. Shoulder gets to aching. Neck
+stiff. Come here and boil out" ... "Like magic--this water. I've been to
+every medicinal bath in Europe and America. This beats 'em all."
+
+You finally turn away, dazed with stories of elephantine legs, restored
+to perfect size and symmetry. Of muscles dead for a decade, moving with
+the precision of a motor. Of joints rigid as a steel rail suddenly
+pliable as the ankles of a tap dancer.
+
+Here they sit in the sun--patient, hopeful; their crutches leaning
+against their trailer steps. They have the blessed privilege of
+discussing their ailments with each other. "Oh, your misery was nothing.
+Doctors said I would never reach here alive...."
+
+An analysis shows traces of radium.
+
+A few miles below Tecopa is another landmark of the country known as the
+China Ranch. To old timers it was known as The Chinaman's Ranch. One
+Quon Sing, who had been a cook at Old Harmony Borax Works quit that job
+to serve a Mr. Osborn, wealthy mining man with interests near Tecopa.
+His service with Osborn covered a period of many years.
+
+"I can't state it as a fact," Shorty Harris once told me, "but I have
+been told by old settlers that Osborn located him on the ranch as a
+reward for long and faithful service."
+
+The land was in the raw stage, with nothing to appeal to a white man
+except water. It was reached through a twisting canyon which filled at
+times with the raging torrents dropped by cloudbursts. Erosion has left
+spectacular scenery. In places mud walls lift straight up hundreds of
+feet. Nobody but a Chinaman or a bandit hiding from the law would have
+wanted it.
+
+There was a spring which the Chinaman developed and soon a little stream
+flowed all year. The industrious Chinaman converted it into a profitable
+ranch. He planted figs and dates and knowing, as only a Chinaman does,
+the value and uses of water the place was soon transformed into a garden
+with shade trees spreading over a green meadow--a cooling, restful
+little haven hidden away in the heart of the hills. He had cows and
+raised chickens and hogs. He planted grapes, dates, and vegetables and
+soon was selling his produce to the settlers scattered about the desert.
+From a wayfaring guest he would accept no money for food or lodging.
+
+After the Chinaman had brought the ranch to a high state of production a
+white man came along and since there was no law in the country, he made
+one of his own--his model the ancient one that "He shall take who has
+the might and he shall keep who can." He chased the Chinaman off with a
+shot gun and sat down to enjoy himself, secure in the knowledge that
+nobody cared enough for a Chinaman to do anything about it.
+
+The Chinaman was never again heard of.
+
+The ranch since has had many owners. Though the roads are rough and the
+grades difficult, on the broad verandas that encircle the old ranch
+house, one feels he has found a bit of paradise "away from it all."
+
+Sitting on the porch once with Big Bill Greer, who owned a life interest
+in it until his demise recently, we talked of the various yarns told of
+the Chinaman.
+
+"The best thing he did was that planting over there by the stream." He
+lifted his huge form from the chair. "Just wait a minute. I'll get you a
+specimen."
+
+While he was gone I strolled around to see other miracles wrought by the
+heathen chased from his home by a Christian's gun. When I returned Bill
+was waiting with two tall glasses, diffusing a tantalizing aroma of
+bourbon. Floating on the liquor were bunches of crisp, cooling mint. He
+gave me one, lifted the other. "Here's to Quon Sing. God rest his soul,"
+Bill said.
+
+As we slowly sipped I asked him if he had brought the specimen.
+
+"It's the mint," Bill said.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XII
+                   A Hovel That Ought To Be a Shrine
+
+
+An Indian rode up to the bench, leaped from his cayuse and tried to tell
+Joe Ryan something about a "hiko." Joe matched his pantomime and broken
+English, finally jerking a thumb over his shoulder and the Indian went
+into the store.
+
+"That's Indian Johnnie," Joe said: "Hundred and fifty miles to his
+place, other side of the Panamint. Awful country to get at. Shorty
+Harris is in a bad way at Ballarat."
+
+A few moments later Charlie drove his pickup to the pump, filled the gas
+tank and before we realized it, was swallowed in a cloud of dust. "He's
+in for a helluva trip," Joe said.
+
+Before the day was over, snow covered the high peaks and a biting wind
+drove us from the bench. "Let's go over to the Mesquite Club," Joe said.
+
+We hurried across the road to the sprawling old building hidden in a
+thicket and listing in every direction of the compass, but over the
+roof, like friendly arms crooked the branches of big mesquite trees.
+Among mining men that ramshackle was known around the world.
+
+Inside was a big pot-bellied stove. Beside it, a huge woodbox. Chairs
+held together with baling wire. Two or three old auto seats hauled in
+from cars abandoned on the desert. An ancient, moth-eaten sofa on which
+the wayfarer out of luck was privileged to sleep. Three or four tables,
+each with a dog-eared deck of cards where old timers played solitaire or
+a spot of poker. There were books and magazines--high and low-brow, left
+by the tourists. But there was a friendliness about the shabby room that
+had nothing to gain from mahogany or chandeliers of gold.
+
+Wind kept us indoors for two days. On the third we were on the bench
+again when someone said, "Here comes Charlie...."
+
+A moment later Joe and Big Dan were helping Charlie take Shorty Harris,
+dean of Death Valley prospectors, more dead than alive, into a cabin and
+lay him on the bed. "You must have had an awful time," Joe said to
+Charlie.
+
+"Not too bad ... made it," Charlie answered as he started a fire in the
+stove. He brought in water and wood and turned to Joe. "Wish you'd fill
+up that gas tank and see about the oil...."
+
+Joe looked at him, puzzled.
+
+"Got to take him to the hospital," Charlie said.
+
+We knew that meant another trip of 140 miles.
+
+"Damned if you do," Joe said. "I'll get somebody to go."
+
+I supposed after the all night trip under such conditions Brown would go
+to bed but an hour later when I went to the store for some small
+purchase a woman climbed out of a pickup truck and with three small
+children, came in. She lived on her ranch 60 miles away and had come to
+buy her month's supply of provisions--a full load for the truck. When
+she paid her bill she nodded toward her brood: "Charlie, those kids look
+like brush Indians with all that hair...."
+
+Charlie got scissors and comb and went to work. Before he had swept out
+the shorn locks Ben Brandt came in, holding his jaw.
+
+"Feels like a stamp mill," he groaned. "Haven't slept in a week. Be dead
+by the time I get to Barstow." It was 125 miles to Barstow and Ben was
+waiting for a ride with someone going that way.
+
+Charlie went behind the counter, returned with forceps, opening and
+closing the jaws of the instrument two or three times as if in practice
+and then he turned to the sufferer: "You understand it's against the law
+for me to use these things. In a pinch--"
+
+"To hell with the law," Ben snapped. "Yank it out!"
+
+Charlie took a chair to the back porch. Ben sat down and with a
+vice-like arm about Ben's head, the forceps went in and the tooth came
+out.
+
+I went outside and sat on the bench with a better understanding of
+Shoshone and people and values which come only from friendships closely
+knitted and help unselfishly given.
+
+Why does a man like the desert? As good an answer as any is another
+question: Why does he like chicken? Students of human behavior, poets,
+writers, gushing debutantes and greying dowagers, humorless scientists,
+and bored urbanites have labored mightily to explain it.
+
+"Something just gets into the blood," one says, frankly groping for an
+answer. Immensities of space. Solitudes that whittle the ego down to
+size. Detachment from routine cares. A feel of nearness to whatever it
+is that is God. Stars to finger. The muted symphonies of farflung sky
+and earth.
+
+Whatever it is, I was now aware that as between hell and Shoshone, I
+would give the nod to Shoshone. I was getting used to Shoshone and
+desolation when a few days later Charlie came out of the store and sat
+beside me on the bench. "Road's open," he said. "I reckon you're in a
+hurry to get away."
+
+I didn't answer at once but conscious of his searching look, finally
+stammered that Dan Modine wanted me to go with him to Happy Jack's
+party. "I can spare another day...." Charlie lit a cigarette, took a
+puff or two. "You've gone desert," he chuckled and went back into the
+store.
+
+For a week I'd been hearing of Happy Jack's party and when Dan told me
+that everyone within 100 miles would be on hand, I was glad to go. Dan
+gave me Jack's background on the 35 mile trip across dry washes, deep
+sands, and hairpin turns on pitching hills.
+
+Born on the desert, Jack was the son of a Forty Niner and a Piute squaw.
+He had grown up as an Indian and had married Mary, a full blood Piute.
+Jack's brother Lem married Anna, another squaw.
+
+"Lem had worked at odd jobs and in the mines," Dan said. "Now and then
+he and Anna would do a little prospecting. Anna found a claim that
+showed a little color. Lem worked alongside his squaw a couple weeks,
+but it was a back breaking job and Lem quit it. But Anna kept digging
+and one day she came up to their shack with a piece of ore that was
+almost pure gold. Anna's find made them rich.
+
+"I reckon money does things to people. Anyway, it didn't take Lem long
+to get rid of Anna. He gave her enough so that she could take it easy.
+Then he pushed off to the city to live high, wide, and handsome. I see
+Anna now and then. She's not jolly like she used to be. Lem has always
+wanted Jack to get rid of Mary and come to the city. In fact, Jack told
+me once that Lem offered to give him half of his money if he would do
+that. But Jack said, to hell with the city. He's the happy go lucky
+sort. Big, good looking, and lazy. His old dobe under the cottonwood
+tree and the water running by with plenty of outdoors--that suits Jack."
+
+We found, as Dan had predicted, that everybody in the country had come
+to Jack's party. A long U shaped table was placed outside under the
+shade of a tree. From nearby pits came a tantalizing aroma of barbecue.
+A keg of bourbon encircled with glasses stood beside a bucket of
+dripping mint. Cigars and cigarettes were on top of the keg and Jack saw
+that his guests were always supplied.
+
+There was an orchestra with capable musicians, Jack occasionally pinch
+hitting for the bull fiddler when the latter took time out for a drink
+or a dance. But when the snare drum player wanted his bourbon, Jack was
+like a kid pulling doodads from a Christmas tree. "It will last a week,"
+Dan said. "A few may pull out after a day or two, but others will take
+their places."
+
+"This must have cost Jack a year's labor," I said. "I told him that
+once," Dan laughed. "He asked me what else would a fellow work a year
+for."
+
+Jack's views of life and things were Mary's, except that Mary knew lean
+years come and if any provisions were to be made for them she would have
+to make them. She tended the goats and the sheep, cut the deer and the
+mountain sheep into strips and hung them high, where the flies wouldn't
+get them, to cure in the breeze. If Jack wanted to throw a party, so did
+Mary. "... Big party ... kill fat steer. Five sheep. Heap good time...."
+To Jack's everlasting credit, be it said that whatever Mary did, suited
+Jack.
+
+"Oh, him fine man," Mary would say. "Like home. Play with children. No
+get mad...."
+
+There may be somewhere in this world a morsel approaching Mary's
+barbecued mountain sheep, but I've never tasted it.
+
+Jack told me later that the best meat is that from an old ram with no
+teeth. "He hasn't eaten all winter, because his teeth won't let him cut
+the hard, woody sage and being starved when spring comes, he gorges on
+the new sacatone. He fattens quickly and his flesh is tender."
+
+While Dan and I were walking about, a long limousine came across the
+valley and parked behind a screen of mesquite well away from the house
+and the guests. Dan and I happened to be nearby as a big, dark man
+expensively tailored stepped out. A lady fashionably dressed remained in
+the car.
+
+"That's Lem," Dan explained. "When he was a kid he ran around in a gee
+string. I reckon his wife doesn't want to meet the in-laws."
+
+We came upon him a moment later and while he and Dan talked of old times
+Jack rushed down and embraced Lem. "Come up," he urged, but Lem's
+interest was lukewarm. Mary was busy and he would see her later. No, he
+didn't wish a drink. He had cigars. Just stopped in to see how Jack was
+and if he'd changed his mind.
+
+Dan and I moved away and sat under a shed along the runoff of the spring
+and had no choice about listening to a conversation not intended for our
+ears.
+
+Jack was squatted on his heels and his brother was sitting on a boulder.
+Lem was talking, his voice brittle: "Of course, we married squaws ...
+but we are more white than Indian. I'll give you all the money you need.
+Let Mary go back to her people. She'll be happy. Look at Anna ... she's
+contented and better off with her own people and it will be the same
+with Mary."
+
+Lem lifted his hand, a big diamond ring flashing on his finger as he
+pointed to the squalid cabin where Jack's fat squaw, her face beaming,
+was serving the guests. "Look at that hovel. Just a pig sty. If you
+prefer that to $10,000 a year, it's your business. I've come out for the
+last time...."
+
+Jack, bareheaded, rose, his hair rumpled in the wind as he glanced at
+the things about--the sagging roof, the shade tree beside it and
+following his glance I saw Mary smile at him and wave. Then he turned to
+Lem: "A pig sty, huh? Ten thousand a year. Mansion in the city." His
+eyes traveled over Lem's smart tailored suit, the diamond, the malacca
+cane pecking the gravel at his feet. I could see Jack's fingers digging
+at his palms, the muscles rippling along his wrists and I sensed that he
+was seething inside.
+
+"Pig sty.... One year I recollect, no crop. No meat. No game. Nothing. I
+was down with fever. She was down too, but she got up and walked and
+crawled from here to Indian Springs. Through the brush. Over the
+mountain to get grub from her people. Why, sometimes I'd feel like going
+off by myself and bawling...." Jack turned again to his brother, flint
+in his dark eyes. "I ought to brain you. To hell with your money. She
+stuck with me and bigod, I'll stick with her."
+
+Then Jack calmly strode back to his party, and somehow it seemed to me
+the hovel had suddenly become a holy shrine.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XIII
+                      Sex in Death Valley Country
+
+
+Sex, of course, went with the white man to the desert, but because there
+were no Freuds, no Kinseys stirring the social sewage, it was considered
+merely as a biologic urge and thus its impact on the lives of the early
+settlers was a realistic one. It was not good for man to live alone. The
+husky young adventurer found a water hole and a cottonwood tree and
+built a cabin. But he found it wasn't a home. The lonely immensity of
+space he knew, was no place for a white woman and none were there. He
+faced the fundamental problem squarely and looked about for a squaw.
+
+He paid Hungry Bill or some other Indian head man $10 for the mate of
+his choice and that sanctified the relation. She brought a certain
+degree of orderliness to the cabin, washed his clothes, cooked his
+meals. A child was born and the cabin became a home. The squaw could
+sharpen a stick, walk out into the brush and return with herbs and roots
+and serve a palatable dinner. She worked his fields, groomed his horses
+and relieved him of responsibility for the children. The progeny
+followed the rules of breeding. Some good. Some bad.
+
+Said old Jim Baker, who married a Shoshone, pleading for a "squar" deal
+for his son: "There's only one creature worse than a genuine Indian and
+that's a half breed. He has got two devils in him and is meaner than the
+meanest Indian I ever saw. That boy of mine is a half-breed and he ain't
+accountable."
+
+Almost all of the first settlers were squaw men and the matings were
+tolerated because they were understood. It was often a long journey to
+obtain the sanction of a Chief and the squaw was taken without
+formality. Many of these matings lasted and the offspring were absorbed
+without social embarrassment in the life of the community. Dr. Kinsey
+would have had little joy in his search for perversion or infidelities,
+though there is the instance of a drunken squaw who aroused the owner of
+a saloon at midnight on the Ash Meadows desert and shouted: "I want a
+man...."
+
+Once Shoshone faced the desperate need of a school. There were only
+three children of school age in the little settlement and the nearest
+school was 28 miles away. Parents complained, but authorities at the
+county seat nearly 200 miles away, pointed out that the law required 13
+children or an average attendance of five and a half to form a school
+district.
+
+Like other community problems it was taken to Charlie, though none
+believed that even Charlie could solve it.
+
+The time for the opening of schools was but a few weeks away when one
+day Brown headed his car out into the desert. "Hunting trip," he
+explained.
+
+In a hovel he found Rosie, a Piute squaw with a brood of children. "How
+old?" Charlie asked.
+
+"Him five ... him six now," she said. "Him seven. Him eight."
+
+"How'd you like to live at Shoshone? Plenty work. Good house."
+
+"Okay. Me come," Rosie said.
+
+With the half breeds, the school was able to open.
+
+Rosie was a challenging problem. She would have taken no beauty prize
+among the Piutes, but when along her desert trails she acquired these
+children of assorted parentage, Fate dealt her an ace.
+
+With the few dollars Rosie wangled from the several fathers for the
+support of their children, she lived unworried. She liked to get drunk
+and the only nettling problem in her life was the federal law against
+selling liquor to Indians. So she established her own medium of
+exchange--a bottle of liquor. Unfortunately she spread a social disease
+and that was something to worry about.
+
+"Rosie has Shoshone over a barrel," Joe Ryan said. "If we run her out,
+we won't have enough children for school."
+
+Then there was the economic angle--the loss of wages by afflicted miners
+and mines crippled by the absence of the unafflicted who would take time
+off to go to Las Vegas for the commodity supplied by Rosie.
+
+Charlie arranged for Ann Cowboy to look after Rosie's children and
+called up W. H. Brown, deputy sheriff at Death Valley Junction and told
+him to come for Rosie. Brownie, as he is known all over the desert, came
+and took Rosie into custody. "What'll I charge her with?"
+
+"She has a venereal disease," Charlie said.
+
+"There's no law I know of against that...."
+
+"All right. Charge her with pollution. She got drunk and fell into the
+spring." Then Charlie called up the Judge and suggested Rosie have a
+year's vacation in the county jail.
+
+The paths that radiated from Rosie's shack in the brush like spokes from
+the hub of a wheel, were soon overgrown with salt grass. She served her
+sentence and returned to Shoshone and the paths were soon beaten smooth
+again.
+
+Eventually Brown declared Shoshone out of bounds for Rosie and she moved
+over into Nevada. There she found a lover of her tribe and one night
+when both were drunk, Rosie decided she'd had enough of him and with a
+big, sharp knife she calmly disemboweled him--for which unladylike
+incident she was removed to a Nevada prison where the state cured her
+syphilis and turned her loose--if not morally reformed, at least
+physically fit.
+
+One of Rosie's patrons was a man thought to be in his middle fifties.
+Always carefully groomed, his white shirts, spotless ties, and tailored
+suits were conspicuous in a place where levis were the rule. He was also
+a total abstainer. When he died suddenly and it was learned he was 82
+years old, Shoshone gasped. An item in his will read: "To Rosie, $50 to
+buy whiskey."
+
+Living in a wickiup in the mesquite was the Indian, Tom Weed, who shared
+with his squaw a passion for liquor. Sober, Tom was industrious in the
+Indian way. He knew the country, when and where the mountain sheep were
+fattest; the herbs that cured and the best grasses for the beautiful
+baskets woven by his wife.
+
+Tom filed on a deposit of non-metallic ore near Shoshone and forgot it.
+A subsequent locater found a buyer. Considerable capital was to be
+invested and the purchaser decided that Tom, if so disposed, could at
+least challenge the title. In order to dispose of Tom he sent the
+document to Dad Fairbanks together with a check payable to Tom for $1000
+and asked Dad to get a quit claim deed from Tom.
+
+Since $1000 was more than Tom ever expected to see in his life he was
+eager to sign. "You cash check?" he asked Dad.
+
+"Sure," Dad told him.
+
+As Dad was getting the money he said, "Tom, long winter ahead. Hard to
+get work. Don't you think you'd better leave money with me? Might come
+in handy." Dad saw that Tom was impressed and added: "You told me
+yesterday you were going over to Las Vegas. That's another good reason.
+Think it over."
+
+"Okay. Me think." Tom stood for a long moment staring at the floor,
+studying every angle of the problem. Finally he thrust his palm at Dad
+and said gravely: "Might die...."
+
+Dad gave him the money and Tom went to Las Vegas. In an hour he was
+drunk. In three he was broke and in jail.
+
+One night he and his squaw got blissfully drunk. They were sleeping in a
+shed full of combustible junk when it caught fire. Other Indians
+attracted by their screams rushed to the scene but both were dead. From
+Tom's wickiup, a few feet from the shed, they took Tom's guns and
+saddles, his squaw's priceless baskets--all the belongings of both--and
+tossed them into the flames. Thus the evil spirits were kept away and
+the souls of Tom and his squaw passed happily to the Piute heaven which
+is a place where there is a big lake and forests filled with game and
+the squaws are strong and plentiful.
+
+
+The Johnnie Mine, an important gold producer, east of Shoshone, was
+located by John Tecopa, son of Cap Tecopa, Pahrump Chief.
+
+Tecopa found the float; gave Ed Metcalf an interest to help him locate
+the ledge. Bob and Monte Montgomery bought the claim. They interested
+Jerry Langford, who induced the Mormon Church to get behind the project.
+
+The Potosi was an early discovery on Timber Mountain between the Johnnie
+Mine and Good Springs. (It was here that Carole Lombard, wife of Clark
+Gable, was killed in an airplane accident in 1941.) From this mine came
+the lead which made the bullets used in the Mountain Meadows massacre.
+Jeff Grundy, a prospector of early days, said his father molded the
+bullets and delivered them to John D. Lee, who after 20 years was
+executed for the murder of the 123 victims of the massacre.
+
+Lee was the owner of Lee's Ferry, which was the only place where the
+Colorado River could be crossed in the Grand Canyon area until the
+present suspension bridge 500 feet high was built.
+
+Near Johnnie are Ash Meadows and the beautiful Pahrump Valley,
+overlooked by the Charleston Mountains--the summer sleeping porch of Las
+Vegas, 35 miles south.
+
+At Ash Meadows lived Jack Longstreet, who wore his hair long enough to
+cover his ears. He claimed kinship with the distinguished South Carolina
+family of that name. Easier to prove is that Mr. Longstreet came from
+Texas and as a 14 year old youngster was caught with a band of horse
+thieves in Colorado. The older ones were hanged but because of his youth
+Longstreet was released after his ears were cropped to brand him for
+identification by others. He lived and drank lustily for 96 years and
+died with a competency.
+
+Near Johnnie also lived Mary Scott, who discovered the Confidence Mine,
+a landmark in Death Valley. Mary was a squaw who, after consorting with
+several white men, chose for her mate a half-breed named Bob Scott. On a
+hunting and trapping trip Mary picked up some ore which Scott decided
+was silver. Since silver could not be profitably handled because of
+transportation costs, Scott filed no notice.
+
+Years after Scott's death, Mary showed samples of the ore to her cousin,
+an Indian named Bob Black and Bob showed it to Frank Cole, a millwright
+at the Johnnie Mine. Cole and Jimmy Ashdown grubstaked Mary and Bob, who
+returned to Death Valley and located the property. Samples showed rich
+gold.
+
+For a wagon with a canopy and a spavined horse Cole and Ashdown secured
+the interest of Mary and Bob. Cole and Ashdown then sold to the
+Montgomery brothers, who through Bishop Cannon secured backing for the
+venture from the Mormon Church.
+
+Dan Driscoll built the road to the mine. Shorty Harris, Bob Warnack, and
+Rube Graham dug the well and mine shaft. It produced rich ore to a depth
+of 65 feet, where the vein was broken up.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XIV
+                   Shoshone Country. Resting Springs
+
+
+The country about Shoshone is identified with the earliest migration of
+Americans to California.
+
+It is a curious fact that prior to the coming of Jedediah Smith who, in
+1826 was actually the first American to enter the state from the east,
+the contented Spanish believed that the Sierras were insurmountable
+barriers to invasion by the hated American or any attacking enemy.
+
+After Smith the first white American to look upon the Shoshone region so
+far as known, was William Wolfskill, a Kentucky trapper who left Santa
+Fe in 1830-31 on a trading expedition with stores of cloth, garments,
+and gimcracks.
+
+Having had poor luck in disposing of his cargo, when he reached the
+Virgin River he decided to push westward across the Mojave Desert and
+entered California by way of Cajon Pass. After resting at San Gabriel he
+went north into the San Joaquin Valley. There he disposed of his stock
+at fabulous prices, taking in trade mules, horses, silks, and other
+items which he took to Taos and Santa Fe, receiving for this merchandise
+equally huge profits.
+
+Wolfskill later settled in Los Angeles, one of the earliest Americans in
+the pueblo where he acquired large land holdings. There he established
+the citrus industry, planting a grove in what is now the heart of Los
+Angeles.
+
+In 1832 Joseph B. Chiles organized a party at Independence, Missouri,
+and started for California. It numbered 50 men, women, and children.
+Upon reaching Fort Laramie, Wyoming (which was officially Fort John, but
+for some reason was never so called) Chiles met Joseph Reddeford Walker
+and employed him as guide.
+
+Eighteen years before the Bennett-Arcane party came to grief, Walker had
+discovered Walker River and Walker Lake in Nevada, afterward named for
+him. After reaching the Sierras, his jaded teams were unable to cross
+and had to be abandoned, the party narrowly escaping death. Having heard
+of the southerly course over the old Spanish Trail, he turned back and
+over it guided the Chiles party.
+
+Early in 1843, John C. Fremont led a party of 39 men from Salt Lake City
+northward to Fort Vancouver and in November of that year, started on the
+return trip to the East. This trip was interrupted when he found his
+party threatened by cold and starvation and he faced about; crossed the
+Sierra Nevadas and went to Sutter's Fort. After resting and outfitting,
+he set out for the East by the southerly route over the old Spanish
+trail, which leads through the Shoshone region.
+
+At a spring somewhere north of the Mojave River he made camp. The water
+nauseated some of his men and he moved to another. Identification of
+these springs has been a matter of dispute and though historians have
+honestly tried to identify them, the fact remains that none can say "I
+was there."
+
+In the vicinity were several springs any of which may have been the one
+referred to by Fremont in his account of the journey. Among these were
+two water holes indicated on early maps as Agua de Tio Mesa, and another
+as Agua de Tomaso.
+
+There are several springs of nauseating water in the area and some of
+the old timers academically inclined, insisted that Fremont probably
+camped at Saratoga Springs, which afforded a sight of Telescope Peak or
+at Salt Spring, nine miles east on the present Baker-Shoshone Highway at
+Rocky Point.
+
+Kit Carson was Fremont's guide. Fremont records that two Mexicans rode
+into his camp on April 27, 1844, and asked him to recover some horses
+which they declared had been stolen from them by Indians at the
+Archilette Spring, 13 miles east of Shoshone.
+
+One of the Mexicans was Andreas Fuentes, the other a boy of 11
+years--Pablo Hernandez. While the Indians were making the raid, the boy
+and Fuentes had managed to get away with 30 of the horses and these they
+had left for safety at a water hole known to them as Agua de Tomaso.
+They reported that they had left Pablo's father and mother and a man
+named Santiago Giacome and his wife at Archilette Spring.
+
+With Fremont, besides Kit Carson, was another famed scout, Alexander
+Godey, a St. Louis Frenchman--a gay, good looking dare devil who later
+married Maria Antonia Coronel, daughter of a rich Spanish don and became
+prominent in California.
+
+In answer to the Mexicans' plea for help, Fremont turned to his men and
+asked if any of them wished to aid the victims of the Piute raid. He
+told them he would furnish horses for such a purpose if anyone cared to
+volunteer. Of the incident Kit Carson, who learned to write after he was
+grown, says in his dictated autobiography: "Godey and myself volunteered
+with the expectation that some men of our party would join us. They did
+not. We two and the Mexicans ... commenced the pursuit."
+
+Fuentes' horse gave out and he returned to Fremont's camp that night,
+but Godey, Carson, and the boy went on. They had good moonlight at first
+but upon entering a deep and narrow canyon, utter blackness came, even
+shutting out starlight, and Carson says they had to "feel for the
+trail."
+
+One may with reason surmise that Godey and Carson proceeded through the
+gorge that leads to the China Ranch and now known as Rainbow Canyon.
+When they could go no farther they slept an hour, resumed the hunt and
+shortly after sunrise, saw the Indians feasting on the carcass of one of
+the stolen horses. They had slain five others and these were being
+boiled. Carson's and Godey's horses were too tired to go farther and
+were hitched out of sight among the rocks. The hunters took the trail
+afoot and made their way into the herd of stolen horses.
+
+Says Carson: "A young one got frightened. That frightened the rest. The
+Indians noticed the commotion ... sprang to their arms. We now
+considered it time to charge on the Indians. They were about 30 in
+number. We charged. I fired, killing one. Godey fired, missed but
+reloaded and fired, killing another. There were only three shots fired
+and two were killed. The remainder ran. I ... ascended a hill to keep
+guard while Godey scalped the dead Indians. He scalped the one he shot
+and was proceeding toward the one I shot. He was not yet dead and was
+behind some rocks. As Godey approached he raised, let fly an arrow. It
+passed through Godey's shirt collar. He again fell and Godey finished
+him."
+
+Subsequently it was discovered that Godey hadn't missed, but that both
+men had fired at the same Indian as proven by two bullets found in one
+of the dead Indians. Godey called these Indians "Diggars." The one with
+the two bullets was the one who sent the arrow through Godey's collar
+and when Godey was scalping him, "he sprang to his feet, the blood
+streaming from his skinned head and uttered a hideous yowl." Godey
+promptly put him out of his pain.
+
+They returned to camp. Writes Fremont: "A war whoop was heard such as
+Indians make when returning from a victorious enterprise and soon Carson
+and Godey appeared, driving before them a band of horses recognized by
+Fuentes to be part of those they had lost. Two bloody scalps dangling
+from the end of Godey's gun...."
+
+Fremont wrote of it later: "The place, object and numbers considered,
+this expedition of Carson and Godey may be considered among the boldest
+and most disinterested which the annals of Western adventure so full of
+daring deeds can present." It was indeed a gallant response to the plea
+of unfortunates whom they'd never seen before and would never see again.
+
+When Fremont and his party reached the camp of the Mexicans they found
+the horribly butchered bodies of Hernandez, Pablo's father, and Giacome.
+The naked bodies of the wives were found somewhat removed and shackled
+to stakes.
+
+Fremont changed the name of the spring from Archilette to Agua de
+Hernandez and as such it was known for several years. He took the
+Mexican boy, Pablo Hernandez, with him to Missouri where he was placed
+with the family of Fremont's father-in-law, U. S. Senator Thomas H.
+Benton. The young Mexican didn't care for civilization and the American
+way of life and in the spring of 1847 begged to be returned to Mexico.
+Senator Benton secured transportation for him on the schooner Flirt, by
+order of the Navy, and he was landed at Vera Cruz--a record of which is
+preserved in the archives of the 30th Congress, 1848.
+
+Three years later a rumor was circulated that the famed bandit, Joaquin
+Murietta was no other than Pablo Hernandez.
+
+Lieutenant, afterwards Colonel, Brewerton was at Resting Springs in 1848
+with Kit Carson who then was carrying important messages for the
+government to New Mexico. He found the ground white with the bleached
+bones of other victims of the desert Indians. Brewerton calls them Pau
+Eutaws.
+
+The Mormons began early to look upon this region as a logical part of
+the State of Deseret, for the creation of which, Brigham Young
+petitioned Congress, setting forth among reasons for the recognition of
+such a state that: "... We are so far removed from all civilized society
+and organized government and also natural barriers of trackless deserts,
+including mountains of snow and savages more bloody than either, so that
+we can never be united with any other portion of the country."
+
+As early as 1851, the far-seeing Young decided to found a colony of
+Saints in San Bernardino, California, to extend Mormon influence. Sam
+Brannan, brilliant adherent of that faith, had already come to
+California with the nucleus of a Mormon colony in 1846, two years before
+Marshall discovered gold.
+
+Brannan became an outstanding figure among the Argonauts. None exceeded
+him in leadership or popularity in the building of San Francisco and the
+state. He grew rich and unfortunately began drinking; finally abandoned
+Mormonism and died poor.
+
+The colonizers sent out by Brigham Young were in three divisions. One
+under the leadership of Amasa Lyman, who brought his five wives. Another
+was headed by Charles C. Rich, who was accompanied by three of his
+wives. It is interesting to note that Rich became the father of 51
+children by five wives.
+
+The third division was under the command of Captain Jefferson Hunt,
+guide for the entire party. These leaders were all able men who were
+highly regarded by gentiles. They also camped at Agua de Hernandez and
+it was the Mormons who junked the previous name and gave one with
+significance. They called it "Resting Springs" and this more fitting
+name has lasted.
+
+On May 21, 1851, the Mormon elder, Parley P. Pratt, heading a party of
+missionaries en route to the South Sea Islands writes in his diary: "We
+encamped at a place called Resting Springs.... This is a fine place for
+rest.... Since leaving the Vegas (Las Vegas) we have traveled 75 miles
+through the most horrible desert.... Twenty miles from the Vegas we were
+assailed ... by a shower of arrows from the savage mountain robbers....
+Leaving Resting Springs the party arrived at Salt Spring gold mines
+toward evening...."
+
+In 1850, Phineas Banning, pioneer resident of Los Angeles and later
+owner of Catalina Island, hauled freight from Los Angeles to the gold
+mine at Salt Spring opposite Rocky Point just south of the Amargosa
+River on the Baker road and in 1854 Mormons discovered gold 25 miles
+south of Resting Springs, long before Dr. French searched for the
+Gunsight in Death Valley.
+
+The Amargosa River is one of the world's most remarkable water courses.
+Originating at Springdale, north of Beatty, Nevada, it twists southward
+in zigzag pattern until it reaches a point about 34 miles south of
+Shoshone. There it turns west, crosses Highway 127, enters Death Valley
+at its most southerly point and then turns north to disappear 60 miles
+from the place of its origin.
+
+You may cross and re-cross it many times totally unaware of its
+existence, but in the cloudburst season it can and does become a
+terrible agent of destruction.
+
+In 1853 Major George Chorpenning obtained a contract to carry mail
+between the Mormon colony of San Bernardino, California, and Salt Lake.
+To reach Resting Springs, a station on the route, required five days.
+Today it is a journey of four hours.
+
+Resting Springs was also a relay station for white outlaws and Indian
+raiders from Utah, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Even before Fremont,
+Carson, or the Mormons old Bill Williams, for whom Bill Williams River,
+Bill Williams Mountain, and the town of Williams, Arizona, are named was
+at Resting Springs.
+
+    [Illustration: Map of Death Valley]
+
+    [Illustration: John W. Searles, looking for gold, made a fortune in
+    borax.]
+
+    [Illustration:  COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Like Weepah which "Boomed
+    and Busted" after one day, Gilbert died after a few weeks.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD G. WEIGHT Saratoga Springs]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. The Bottom
+    of America]
+
+                               BAD WATER
+                       279.6 FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL
+                 LOWEST POINT IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
+
+                       <==  SHOSHONE           57
+                       <==  BAKER              93
+                          FURNACE CREEK      17  ==>
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Grave of
+    Jas. Dayton.
+    Bones are those of his horses.]
+
+    [Illustration: Dugouts in Dublin Gulch at Shoshone.]
+
+    [Illustration: Mesquite Club, Shoshone. Known throughout the West.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Golden
+    Canyon]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. One of the
+    famous Twenty Mule Teams.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Here boomed
+    and busted the C. C. Julian swindle. Great names and great banks
+    were shamefully involved.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Yellow Aster Mine
+    (foreground) made owners rich. Randsburg in the background.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Belle Springs (Agua Tomaso)
+    on old Salt Lake trail. Camp site of John C. Fremont.]
+
+    [Illustration: Ralph Jacobus Fairbanks, outstanding pioneer, every
+    man's friend.]
+
+    [Illustration: Dobe Charlie Nels.
+    He saw Bodie boom and die.]
+
+    [Illustration: Bodie, hellroarer from cemetery. Now another ghost
+    town.]
+
+    [Illustration: Seldom-seen Slim, colorful desert character.]
+
+    [Illustration: Senator Charles Brown, benevolent overlord of Death
+    Valley.]
+
+    [Illustration: Panamint Tom, noted Piute, brother of Hungry Bill,
+    Indian Chief]
+
+    [Illustration: Where these wickiups were, now stands luxurious
+    Furnace Creek Inn.]
+
+    [Illustration: Courtesy Frasher's Photo.  Pomona, Calif. Darwin
+    Falls]
+
+    [Illustration: First House in Shoshone, built by Cub Lee.]
+
+    [Illustration: Shorty Harris and his cabin at Ballarat, Panamint
+    Valley.]
+
+    [Illustration: Jim Butler, the discoverer of Tonopah Silver.]
+
+    [Illustration: Sir Harry Oakes, booted off a train one day,
+    discovered one of the world's richest mines the next.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Beatty, Nevada. Bare
+    Mountain in distance.]
+
+    [Illustration: "Ma" and "Dad" Fairbanks.
+    He was known to the Indians as Long Man.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Old Road Sign in Emigrant
+    Wash.]
+
+                           Townsend Pass -->
+                            <-- Skidoo 7 M.
+
+    [Illustration: Rock resting on gravel, gravel on sand. Here Quon
+    Sing, heathen, created an oasis, was chased off by Christian's
+    guns.]
+
+    [Illustration: Death Valley Scotty on his native heath.]
+
+    [Illustration: Charles and Stella Brown, Shoshone.]
+
+    [Illustration: Station at Rhyolite, Nevada, long a ghost town.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Monument in
+    Death Valley honors Shorty Harris.]
+
+  BURY ME BESIDE JIM DAYTON IN THE VALLEY WE LOVED. ABOVE ME WRITE:
+  "HERE LIES SHORTY HARRIS, A SINGLE BLANKET JACKASS
+  PROSPECTOR."--EPITAPH REQUESTED BY SHORTY (FRANK) HARRIS BELOVED GOLD
+  HUNTER. 1856-1834. HERE JAS. DAYTON, PIONEER, PERISHED 1898.
+
+  TO THESE TRAILMAKERS WHOSE COURAGE MATCHES THE FOUNDERS OF THE LAND
+  THIS BIT OF EARTH IS DEDICATED FOREVER.
+
+    [Illustration: Pete Harmon, prospector. He walked more than 400
+    miles in July to visit Shorty Harris when he heard that he was ill.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD. O. WEIGHT Calico, Ghost Town]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Wild Burro
+    Colt]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Death Valley's fantastic
+    rock formations seen from Auguerreberry's Point.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Old Harmony Borax Works,
+    opposite Furnace Creek.]
+
+    [Illustration: January 2, 1926. We camped our second night out at
+    the Phantom City of Rhyolite.]
+
+    [Illustration: Dublin Gulch, Shoshone. In these dugouts lived Joe
+    Volmer, Dobe Charley and Jack Crowley, prospectors.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Golden Street, Rhyolite]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Bad Water, here the thirsty
+    drank and died.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Ballarat, once an important
+    freight station, now sand and sage.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Stables of Tufa Works used
+    by Twenty Mule Teams, where borax was mined.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT Zabriskie Ruins. Opals may
+    be found in the canyon at right.]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Charcoal
+    Pits]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Typical
+    Death Valley Canyon]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Death Valley
+    sand dunes]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Effect of
+    prehistoric convulsions]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Furnace
+    Creek wash]
+
+    [Illustration: COURTESY FRASHER'S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF. Ryan, and an
+    abandoned borax mine.]
+
+Williams was a Baptist preacher, turned Mountain Man. He had guided
+Fremont through the terrors of the San Juan country and was accused of
+cannibalism when hunger threatened one detachment. Of Williams Kit
+Carson said: "In starving times, don't walk ahead of Bill Williams."
+
+Williams brought a band of Chaguanosos Indians to Resting Springs and
+made it an outpost for a horse stealing raid. With him were Pegleg Smith
+and Jim Beckwith, the mulatto who after having been a blacksmith with
+Ashley's Fur Traders in 1821, became a famous guide, Indian Chief,
+trader, and scout. (Also called Beckwourth and Beckworth.)
+
+Leaving Resting Springs, they proceeded through Cajon Pass for their
+loot and on May 14, 1840, Juan Perez, administrator at San Gabriel
+Mission excited Southern California when he announced that every ranch
+between San Gabriel and San Bernardino had been stripped of horses. Two
+days later posses from every settlement in the valley started in
+pursuit. The raiders made it a running battle, defeated several
+detachments, adding the latter's stock and grub to their plunder.
+
+Five days later, reinforcements were sent from Los Angeles, Chino, and
+other settlements, all under command of Jose Antonio Carrillo--ancestor
+of the movie celebrity, Leo Carrillo. He had "225 horses, 75 men, 49
+guns with braces of pistols, 19 spears, 22 swords and sabers, and 400
+cartridges."
+
+The posse threw fear into the raiders, but didn't catch them, though the
+latter lost half of the stolen horses. At Resting Springs, Carrillo
+found some abandoned clothing, saddles, and cooking utensils. Fifteen
+hundred horses that had died from thirst or lack of food were counted
+during the chase.
+
+Later, when Pegleg Smith was chided about the high price he demanded of
+an emigrant for a horse, he remarked: "Well, the horses cost me plenty.
+I lost half of them getting out of the country and three of my best
+squaws...."
+
+The earliest American settler at Resting Springs remembered by old
+timers was Philander Lee, a rough and somewhat eccentric squaw man. He
+was big, straight as a ramrod, afraid of nothing, and of an undetermined
+past. He was there in the early Eighties. He cleared 200 acres, raised
+alfalfa, stock, and some fruit. He had a way of adding the last part of
+his first name to his offspring, Leander and Meander are samples. Some
+of his descendants still live in the country.
+
+It was near Resting Springs Ranch while Phi Lee owned it that Jacob
+Breyfogle, of lost mine fame, was scalped by Hungry Bill's tribesmen.
+The story is told in another chapter.
+
+Phi Lee's brother, Cub Lee, who added spicy pages to the annals of Death
+Valley country, built the first home erected at Shoshone--an adobe which
+still stands. It was long the home of the squaw, Ann Cowboy. Another
+brother of Phi Lee was known as "Shoemaker" because he roamed the desert
+as a cobbler. All were squaw men.
+
+Cub Lee established a reputation for keeping his word and it was said no
+one ever disputed it and lived. Indians over in Nevada were giving a
+"heap big" party. His squaw wanted to go. Cub didn't. "You stay home,"
+he ordered. "If you go, I'll kill you." He rode away and upon returning,
+discovered she was absent. He leaped on his cayuse, went to the party
+and found her. Whipping out his gun he killed both wife and son, blew
+the smoke out of his pistol and leisurely rode away.
+
+But the Nevada officials thought Cub Lee was too meticulous about
+keeping his word and Cub had a brief cooling off period in the pen.
+
+Pegleg Smith made Resting Springs his headquarters for the greatest haul
+in the history of California horse stealing and reached Cajon Pass
+before the theft was discovered. These horses were driven into Utah and
+there sold to emigrants, traders, and ranchers. Smith may be said to be
+the inventor of the Lost Mine, as a means of getting quick money. The
+credulous are still looking for mines that existed only in Pegleg's fine
+imagination.
+
+Thomas L. Smith was born at Crab Orchard, Kentucky, October 10, 1801.
+With little schooling, he ran away from home to become a trapper and
+hunter, and following the western streams eventually settled in Wyoming.
+He married several squaws, choosing these from different tribes, thus
+insuring friendly alliance with all.
+
+He had been a member of Le Grand's first trapping expedition to Santa Fe
+and was an associate of such outstanding men as St. Vrain, Sublette,
+Platte, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, the merchant Antoine Rubideaux
+(properly Robedoux) of St. Louis. He spoke several Indian languages and
+earned the gratitude of the Indians in his area by leading them to
+victory in a battle with the Utes. Able and likable, he also had iron
+nerves and courage. His morals, he justified on the ground that his were
+the morals of the day.
+
+J. G. Bruff, historian, whose "Gold Rush-Journal and Drawings" is good
+material for research, met Smith on Bear River August 6, 1849, and wrote
+in his diary: "Pegleg Smith came into camp. He trades whiskey." Actually
+he traded anything he could lay his hands on.
+
+While trapping for beaver with St. Vrain on the Platte, Smith was shot
+by an Indian, the bullet shattering the bones in his leg just above the
+ankle. He was talking with St. Vrain at the moment and after a look at
+the injury, begged those about to amputate his leg. Having no experience
+his companions refused. He then asked the camp cook to bring him a
+butcher knife and amputated it himself with minor assistance by the
+noted Milton Sublette.
+
+Smith was then carried on a stretcher to his winter quarters on the
+Green River. While the wound was healing he discovered some bones
+protruding. Sublette pulled them out with a pair of bullet molds. Indian
+remedies procured by his squaws healed the stump and in the following
+spring of 1828 he made a rough wooden leg. Thereafter he was called
+Pegleg by the whites and We-he-to-ca by all Indians.
+
+A wooden socket was fitted into the stirrup of his saddle and with this
+he could ride as skillfully as before. In the lean, last years of his
+life, he could be seen hopping along under an old beaver hat in San
+Francisco to and from Biggs and Kibbe's corner to Martin Horton's.
+Something in his appearance stamped him as a remarkable man.
+
+Major Horace Bell, noted western ranger, lawyer, author, and editor of
+early Los Angeles, relates that he saw Pegleg near a Mother Lode town,
+lying drunk on the roadside, straddled by his half-breed son who was
+pounding him in an effort to arouse him from his stupor.
+
+Smith had little success as a prospector, but saw in man's lust for
+gold, ways to get it easier than the pick and shovel method.
+
+In the pueblo days of Los Angeles, Smith was a frequent visitor at the
+Bella Union, the leading hotel. Always surrounded by a spellbound group,
+he lived largely. When his money ran out he always had a piece of
+high-grade gold quartz to lure investment in his phantom mine.
+
+And so we have the Lost Pegleg, located anywhere from Shoshone to
+Tucson. Nevertheless, no adequate story of the movement of civilization
+westward can ignore South Pass and Pegleg Smith.
+
+
+About 25 miles east of Shoshone and set back from the road under willows
+and cottonwoods, an old house identifies a landmark of Pahrump
+Valley--the Manse Ranch, once owned by the Yundt family.
+
+The original Yundt was among the first settlers, contemporary with
+Philander and Cub Lee and Aaron Winters. Yundt was a squaw man and his
+children, Sam, Lee, and John followed the father in taking squaws for
+their wives.
+
+Sam Yundt was operating a small store at Good Springs and making a
+precarious living when a sleek and talented promoter secured a mining
+claim nearby and induced Sam to enlarge his stock in order to care for
+the increased business promised by supplying provisions for the mine's
+employees. Sam, with visions of quick, profitable turnovers, stocked the
+empty shelves. For a few months the bills were paid promptly, then
+lagged. Sam yielded to plausible excuses and carried the account.
+Finally his own credit was jeopardized and wholesalers began to threaten
+suits. Then he heard the sheriff had an attachment ready to serve. In
+his desperation Sam went to the debtor. "I'm ruined," he pleaded. "You
+fellows will have to raise some money or we'll all quit eating."
+
+The fellow said, "All I can give you is stock in the Yellow Pine. It's
+that or nothing."
+
+Sam Yundt had done with next to nothing all his life, took the stock and
+waited for the sheriff. Then the miracle--pay dirt and Sam Yundt was
+rich, and now he did the natural thing. He decided he would live at a
+pace that matched his means.
+
+George Rose, an old friend, had a mine in the Avawatz and he needed
+money. He went to Sam. "Now that you're rich," he told Sam, "you'll be
+taking life easy. I've got some swamp land on the coast near Long Beach.
+Best duck shooting I know of and I'll sell it cheap."
+
+Sam didn't want it but he bought it just to accommodate his friend. In a
+little while the swamp land was an oil field and oil added another
+fortune to Yellow Pine's gold. Sam put his squaw Nancy, away, moved to
+the city and married a white woman. Nancy was provided for and for years
+she could be seen driving all over the desert in her buggy.
+
+A later owner of the Manse was one of whom the writer has a revealing
+memory. A battered Ford stopped at Shoshone and an unshaven individual
+stepped out, went into the store and came out with a loaf of bread and a
+chunk of bologna. Dirty underwear showed through a flapping rent in his
+patched overalls as he tore off a piece of bread and a chunk of the
+bologna and had his meal. The uneaten portions he tossed into the tool
+box, wiped his hands on his thighs and his mouth on his hand.
+
+"Jean Cazaurang," Brown chuckled, "won't pay six bits for lunch in the
+dining room. Worth $2,000,000."
+
+When the dinner gong sounded Cazaurang went to his tool box, retrieved
+the rest of the bologna, twisted a hunk from the bread loaf, tossed the
+rest back into the tool box. This time he saved a dollar. He curled
+himself up in the Ford that night and saved $2.00. Besides the Manse
+Ranch he had a 10,000 acre ranch in Mexico, stocked with sheep, cattle,
+and horses, and had several mines.
+
+Jean's end was not a happy one. One payday at his ranch, the good
+looking and likable young Mexican who worked for him, came for his
+money. Jean counted out the money from a poke and poured it into the
+palm of the Mexican. The Mexican counted it and with a smile looked at
+Jean. "Pardon me, Se�or ... it's two bits short."
+
+"Be gone," ordered Jean.
+
+"But Se�or, I have worked hard. My wife is hungry and I am hungry. My
+children are hungry."
+
+"Be gone," again shouted Jean and whipped out his gun.
+
+But the Mexican was young, lean, and lithe and he seized Jean's wrist
+and when he turned the wrist loose Jean Cazaurang was dead. And then the
+Mexican made one mistake. Instead of going to the sheriff he became
+panic stricken and taking the body to a nearby ravine, he heaved it into
+the brush where it was found later, feet up.
+
+But Jean Cazaurang had saved two bits.
+
+A big luxuriously appointed hearse came for Jean and people said it was
+the first decent ride he'd ever had in his life.
+
+Sentiment was with the Mexican, but he drew a short term for bungling.
+
+Because in one will Jean left his property to his wife and in another to
+his housekeeper, the estate was tied up in court, where it remained for
+11 years--fat pickings for lawyers. Finally the widow was awarded one
+half the estate under community property law, but the widow was dead.
+The housekeeper got the other half, and so ends the story of Jean
+Cazaurang and two bits.
+
+Rarely did desert ranches show other profits than those which one finds
+in doing the thing one likes to do, as in the case of a recent owner of
+the Manse--the wealthy Mrs. Lois Kellogg--the soft-voiced eastern lady
+who fell in love with the desert, drilled an artesian well, the flow of
+which is among the world's largest. Small, cultured, she yet found
+thrills in driving a 20-ton truck and trailer from the Manse to Los
+Angeles or to the famed Oasis Ranch 200 miles away in Fish Lake
+Valley--another desert landmark which she bought to further gratify her
+passion for the Big Wide Open.
+
+And there you have a slice of life as it is on the desert--one miserably
+dying in his lust for money, one fleeing its solitude; another seeking
+its solace.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter XV
+                       The Story of Charles Brown
+
+
+The story of Charles Brown and the Shoshone store begins at Greenwater.
+In the transient horde that poured into that town, he was the only one
+who hadn't come for quick, easy money. On his own since he was 11 years
+old, when he'd gone to work in a Georgia mine, he wanted only a job and
+got it. In the excited, loose-talking mob he was conspicuous because he
+was silent, calm, unhurried.
+
+There were no law enforcement officers in Greenwater. The jail was 130
+miles away and every day was field day for the toughs. Better citizens
+decided finally to do something about it. They petitioned George Naylor,
+Inyo county's sheriff at Independence to appoint or send a deputy to
+keep some semblance of order.
+
+Naylor sent a badge over and with it a note: "Pin it on some husky
+youngster, unmarried and unafraid and tell him to shoot first."
+
+Again the Citizens' Committee met. "I know a fellow who answers that
+description," one of them said. "Steady sort. Built like a panther. Came
+from Georgia. Kinda slow-motioned until he's ready for the spring.
+Name's Brown."
+
+The badge was pinned on Brown.
+
+Greenwater was a port of call for Death Valley Slim, a character of
+western deserts, who normally was a happy-go-lucky likable fellow. But
+periodically Slim would fill himself with desert likker, his belt with
+six-guns, and terrorize the town.
+
+Shortly after Brown assumed the duties of his office, Slim sent word to
+the deputy sheriff at Death Valley Junction that he was on his way to
+that place for a little frolic. "Tell him," he coached his messenger,
+"sheriffs rile me and he'd better take a vacation."
+
+After notifying the merchants and the residents, who promptly barricaded
+themselves indoors, the officer found shelter for himself in Beatty,
+Nevada.
+
+So Slim saw only empty streets and barred shutters upon arrival and
+since there was nothing to shoot at he headed through Dead Man's Canyon
+for Greenwater. There he found the main street crowded to his liking and
+the saloons jammed. He made for the nearest, ordered a drink and
+whipping out his gun began to pop the bottles on the shelves. At the
+first blast, patrons made a break for the exits. At the second, the
+doors and windows were smashed and when Slim holstered his gun, the
+place was a wreck.
+
+Messengers were sent for Brown, who was at his cabin a mile away. Brown
+stuck a pistol into his pocket and went down. He found Slim in Wandell's
+saloon, the town's smartest. There Slim had refused to let the patrons
+leave and with the bartenders cowed, the patrons cornered, Slim was
+amusing himself by shooting alternately at chandeliers, the feet of
+customers and the plump breasts of the nude lady featured in the
+painting behind the bar. Following Brown at a safe distance, was half
+the population, keyed for the massacre.
+
+Brown walked in. "Hello, Slim," he said quietly. "Fellows tell me you're
+hogging all the fun. Better let me have that gun, hadn't you?"
+
+"Like hell," Slim sneered. "I'll let you have it right through the
+guts--"
+
+As he raised his gun for the kill, the panther sprang and the battle was
+on. They fought all over the barroom--standing up; lying down; rolling
+over--first one then the other on top. Tables toppled, chairs crashed.
+For half an hour they battled savagely, finally rolling against the
+bar--both mauled and bloody. There with his strong vice-like legs
+wrapped around Slim's and an arm of steel gripping neck and shoulder,
+Brown slipped irons over the bad man's wrists. "Get up," Brown ordered
+as he stood aside, breathing hard.
+
+Slim rose, leaned against the bar. There was fight in him still and
+seeing a bottle in front of him, he seized it with manacled hands,
+started to lift it.
+
+"Slim," Brown said calmly, "if you lift that bottle you'll never lift
+another."
+
+The bad boy instinctively knew the look that pages death and Slim's
+fingers fell from the bottle.
+
+Greenwater had no jail and Brown took him to his own cabin. Leaving the
+manacles on the prisoner he took his shoes, locked them in a closet. No
+man drunk or sober he reflected, would tackle barefoot the gravelled
+street littered with thousands of broken liquor bottles. Then he went to
+bed.
+
+Waking later, he discovered that Slim had vanished and with him, Brown's
+number 12 shoes. He tried Slim's shoe but couldn't get his foot into it.
+There was nothing to do but follow barefoot. He left a blood-stained
+trail, but at 2 a.m. he found Slim in a blacksmith shop having the
+handcuffs removed. Brown retrieved his shoes and on the return trip Slim
+went barefoot. After hog-tying his prisoner Brown chained him to the bed
+and went to sleep.
+
+Thereafter, the bad boys scratched Greenwater off their calling list.
+
+Slim afterwards attained fame with Villa in Mexico, became a good
+citizen and later went East, established a sanatorium catering to the
+wealthy and acquired a fortune.
+
+Among the first arrivals in Greenwater was a lanky adventurer known to
+the Indians as Long Man and to whites for his ability to make money in
+any venture and an even more marvelous inability to keep it. He was
+Ralph Jacobus Fairbanks. Broke at the time, he was seeking the quickest
+way to a "comeback."
+
+Foreseeing that the biggest names in copper meant a rush, he had taken a
+look at the little stagnant spring with a green scum that was to give
+the town its name.
+
+"Not enough water in it to do the family washing," he decided and with
+uncanny talent for seeing opportunity where others would starve to
+death, he was soon peddling water at a dollar a bucket. He had hauled it
+40 miles uphill from Furnace Creek wash.
+
+A hopeful, but late arrival who expected to find the town crowded with
+killers was an undertaker who came with a huge stock of coffins. The
+prospect of a quick turnover seemed to guarantee success, but in two
+years Greenwater had exactly one funeral and he sold but one coffin.
+Disgusted he stacked the caskets in the center of his shop; left and was
+never again heard of.
+
+Fairbanks came into town one day with his sweat-stained 16 mule team,
+noticed the abandoned coffins, picked out the largest and best and gave
+Greenwater its first watering trough, which was used as long as the town
+lasted.
+
+Fairbanks soon made enough money to acquire a hotel, store, and a bar,
+which became a popular rendezvous. Fairbanks was born of well-to-do
+parents, in a covered wagon en route to Utah in 1857. Of the thousands
+who flocked into Greenwater, only he and Charles Brown were to remain in
+Death Valley country and wrest fortunes from America's most desolate
+region. To Greenwater he brought his wife, Celestia Abigail, who shared
+his spirit of adventure, but fortunately for him she possessed a caution
+which he lacked. Among their children was a beautiful and vivacious
+daughter, Stella.
+
+Fairbanks, who was of the quick, go-getting type, didn't care for Brown.
+Born in the North, he was critical of the slow-moving, silent, young
+Georgian and unacquainted with the Deep South's drawl, he referred to
+him as "that damned foreigner."
+
+The reputation of the Fairbanks camaraderie spread, and Mrs. Fairbanks,
+who understood the longing of a youngster for a home-cooked meal,
+invited Brown to dinner.
+
+There were other young fortune seekers in Greenwater who were also
+occasional guests at the Fairbanks dinners--among them a Yankee from
+Maine--Harry Oakes, of whom the world was to hear later. Allen Gillman,
+known as the Rattlesnake Kid, because of his stalking rattlesnakes to
+indulge his hobby of making hat bands and trinkets, later to become
+associated with Bernarr McFadden. Wealthy young mining engineers. Bank
+clerks with futures. Brown apparently had none.
+
+"He'll get out of the country like he came in--afoot and broke," rivals
+told Stella. So when romance came, there was still a long trail ahead.
+
+Then came Greenwater's first warning of trouble. A few miners were laid
+off; a few padlocks appeared on a few cabins; a few merchants
+complained. Soon it was noticed that the tinny pianos from which
+slim-fingered "professors" swept the two-step and the waltz were
+gathering dust while the girls lolled in empty honkies. But when Diamond
+Tooth Lil padlocked her door and joined the rush to a new copper strike
+at Crackerjack in the Avawatz Mountains the wiser knew that Greenwater
+was through.
+
+With no guests Fairbanks told off on his fingers, departed patrons, mine
+owners, doctors, lawyers. "Just Charlie left. Wonder what's keeping
+him?" Celestia Abigail knew. She knew that the big Georgian was
+desperately in love with Stella and didn't care how many of her suitors
+left.
+
+With mines closing and few official duties, Brown loaded a burro with
+supplies and with Joe Yerrin went on a prospecting trip. Their course
+led across Death Valley. They were caught in a heat that was a record,
+even for the Big Sink, and ran out of water. Fortunately they were
+within a few miles of Surveyor's Well--a stagnant hole north of
+Stovepipe. The burros were also suffering and Brown and Yerrin staggered
+to water barely in time to escape death.
+
+The well there is dug on a slant and looking down they saw a prospector
+kneeling at the water, filling a canteen and blocking passage.
+
+"Reckon you fellows are thirsty," he greeted. "I'll hand you up a drink.
+Have to strain it though. Full of wiggletails." He pulled his shirt tail
+out of his pants, stretched it over a stew pan, strained the water
+through it and handed the pan up to Brown. "Now it's fit to drink," he
+said proudly.
+
+"It was no time to be finicky," Charlie said. "We drank."
+
+Brown and Yerrin combed hill and canyon but failed to find anything of
+value. Yerrin knew of another place. "You can have it," Brown said. "I
+left a good claim."
+
+Yerrin eyed him a long moment, then grinned: "Stella, huh?"
+
+The sage in Greenwater streets was rank now and again Ralph Fairbanks
+looked out over the dying town. "Ma, we're getting out," he said. He
+emptied his pockets on the table; counted the cash. "Ten dollars and
+thirty cents. Can't get far on that--"
+
+He was interrupted by a knock at the door. There stood a stranger who
+wanted dinner and lodging for the night. During the evening the guest
+disclosed that he was en route to his mining claim near a place called
+Shoshone, 38 miles south. It was near a spring with plenty of water,
+warm, but usable. He wanted to put 50 miners to work but first he had to
+find someone willing to go there and board them.
+
+"Maybe we'd go," Fairbanks said. "What'll you pay for board?"
+
+"A dollar and a half a day. Figures around $2250 a month."
+
+Ralph looked at Ma. She nodded. "It's a deal," he said.
+
+The next morning the guest left.
+
+Fairbanks turned to his wife. "I can haul these abandoned shacks down
+there in no time. Charlie's not working, I can get him to help."
+
+Ralph Fairbanks had stayed with Greenwater to the bitter end. Now he
+hauled it away.
+
+The road to the new site was over rough desert, gutted with dry washes.
+Brown slept in the brush, put the shacks up while Fairbanks went for
+others. Both worked night and day to get the place ready. Finally they
+had lodging for 50 men, a dining room, and quarters for the family. With
+$2250 a month they could afford a chef and Ma could take it easy. Stella
+could go Outside to a girl's school.
+
+Then like a bolt of lightning came the bad news. The Greenwater guest,
+they learned, was just an engaging liar, with no mine, no men. He was
+never heard of again.
+
+Without a dollar they were marooned in one of the world's most desolate
+areas. Stumped, Fairbanks looked at Brown. "I've been rich. I've been
+poor. But this is below the belt. What'll we do?"
+
+"I can get a job with the Borax Company," Brown said. "But you?"
+
+"We have that canned goods we brought to feed that liar's hired men.
+I'll figure some way to live in this God-forsaken hole."
+
+From the dining room, prepared for the $2250 monthly income, he lugged a
+table, set it outside the door facing the road. Then he went to the
+pantry, filled a laundry basket with the cans of pork and beans,
+tomatoes, corned beef, and milk brought from Greenwater. He arranged
+them on the table, wrenched a piece of shook from a packing crate and on
+it painted in crude letters the word, "Store." He propped it on the
+table and went inside. "Ma," he announced, "we're in business."
+
+You could have hauled the entire stock and the table away in a
+wheelbarrow and every person in the country for 100 miles in either
+direction laid end to end would not have reached as far as a bush league
+batter could knock a baseball.
+
+The wheelbarrow load of canned goods went to the Indians living in the
+brush and the prospectors camped at the spring. Another replaced it and
+the "store" moved then into the dining room prepared for the
+non-existent boarders. Powder, a must on the list of a desert store, was
+added. The desert man, they knew, needed only a few items but they must
+be good. Overalls honestly stitched. Bacon well cured. Shoes sturdily
+built for hard usage.
+
+"If we sell a shoddy shirt, an inferior pick or shovel to one of our
+customers," they told the wholesaler, "we will never again sell anything
+to him nor to any of his friends."
+
+Soon the prospectors were telling other prospectors they met on the
+trails: "Square shooters--those fellows. Speak our language...." The
+squaws and the bucks told other squaws and bucks. Soon new trails cut
+across the desert to Shoshone and soon the store outgrew the dining room
+in the Fairbanks residence.
+
+From Zabriskie, now an abandoned borax town a few miles south of
+Shoshone, an old saloon and boarding house was cut into sections and
+hauled to Shoshone. It had been previously hauled from Greenwater where
+it had served as a labor union hall and club house. It was deposited
+directly across the road from the original store.
+
+So began in 1910 an empire of trade that is almost unbelievable.
+
+Charlie had at last coaxed the right answer from Stella but there wasn't
+enough in the business at the start to support two families, plus the
+score of children and grandchildren of Fairbanks. At Greenwater he had
+known all the moguls of mining and he had only to ask for a job to get
+one. Retaining his interest in the Shoshone store he became
+superintendent of the Pacific Borax Company's important Lila C. mine and
+thus formed a connection which grew into valuable friendships with the
+executives. The Shoshone business grew and soon required his entire time
+and that of Stella.
+
+Born in Richfield, Utah, Stella Brown grew up in Death Valley country
+and a reel of her life would show an exciting story of triumph over life
+in the raw; in desolate deserts and in boom towns where bandits and
+bawdy women rubbed elbows with the virtuous, millionaire with crook, and
+caste was unknown. If a girl went wrong; if an Indian was starving; a
+widow in need--there you would find her. Some day somebody will write
+the inspiring story of Stella Brown.
+
+Not all those who were told to see Charlie were seeking directions or
+suffering from toothache. When General Electric desperately needed talc,
+its agents were so advised. When Harold Ickes came out to promote
+President Roosevelt's conservation ideas and officials of the War
+Department sought critical material, they too were given the old
+familiar advice and took it, and one day I saw the President of the
+Southern Pacific Railroad stand around for an hour while Charlie waited
+for a Pahrump Indian to make up his mind about a pair of overalls.
+
+Today the store that started on a kitchen table requires a large
+refrigerating plant and lighting system, three large warehouses, two
+tunnels in a hill. About a dozen employees work in shifts from seven in
+the morning till ten at night, to take care of the store, cabins, and
+cafe. Three big trucks haul oil, gas, powder, and provisions to mines in
+the region. Out of canyon, dry wash, and over dunes they come for every
+imaginable commodity, and get it.
+
+A millionaire city man who vacations there sat down on the slab bench
+beside Brown, aimlessly whittling. "Listen, Charlie," he said. "Why
+don't you get out of this desolation and move to the city where you can
+enjoy yourself?"
+
+"Hell--" Charlie muttered, and went on with his whittling.
+
+The new store stands upon the site where Ma Fairbanks' kitchen table
+displayed the canned goods brought from Greenwater. Modern to the minute
+and air-cooled it would be a credit to any city.
+
+
+Again I heard the old familiar, "See Charlie," and while he was telling
+someone how to get to a place no one around had ever heard of, I glanced
+over the Chalfant Register, a Bishop paper, and noticed a letter it had
+published from a lady in Wisconsin seeking information about a brother
+who had gone to Greenwater more than 40 years ago. She had never heard
+of him since.
+
+When Charlie joined me I called his attention to the letter. "I saw it,"
+he said. "Nobody answered and the editor sent the letter to me. I have
+just written her that the brother who came to find out what happened,
+died suddenly at Tonopah, only a few hours by auto from Greenwater. The
+other brother was killed in a saloon. I knew him and the man who killed
+him."
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XVI
+                          Long Man, Short Man
+
+
+Before Tonopah, the first, and Greenwater, the last of the boom camps,
+Indians roaming the desert from Utah westward were showing trails to two
+hikos, who were to become symbols for the reckless courage needed to
+exist in the wasteland. They were known as Long Man and Short Man.
+
+Previous pages have given part of the story of Long Man.
+
+Coming into Death Valley country in the late Nineties, Ralph Jacobus
+Fairbanks wanted to know its water holes, trails, and landmarks. He
+hired Panamint Tom, brother of Hungry Bill, as a guide. Because Tom's
+name was linked with Bill's in stories of missing men, Fairbanks carried
+his six-gun.
+
+Panamint Tom was also armed. When they reached the rim of Death Valley
+and started down, Fairbanks said, "Tom, this is Indian country. You know
+it. I don't. You go first...."
+
+Taking no chance on a surprise night attack, he directed the layout of
+the camp so that their beds were safely apart. Each slept with his gun.
+Around the camp fire, Tom nonchalantly confessed that he'd had to kill
+five white men.
+
+The mission accomplished, they started back. When they came out of the
+valley Tom said, "Long Man, this is white man's country. You know it. I
+don't. You go first." In after years, referring to their trip, Tom said,
+"Long Man, you heap 'fraid that time." "I was," Fairbanks confessed. "Me
+too," Tom said.
+
+When the Goldfield strike was made, Fairbanks saw that a supply station
+on the main line of travel was a surer way to wealth than the gamble of
+digging. He knew of a ranch with good water and luxuriant wild hay at
+Ash Meadows. Hay was worth $200 a ton. The owner had abandoned the
+ranch, however, and moved into the hills. Fairbanks could get little
+information concerning his whereabouts. "Up there somewhere," he was
+told, with a gesture indicating 50 miles of sky line. But he wanted the
+hay and started out and by patient inquiry located his man just before
+daylight on the second day. "What will you give for it?" the man asked.
+
+"Well," Fairbanks parried, "you know it'll cost me as much as the ranch
+is worth to get rid of that wild grass." Having only a vague idea of its
+real worth he had decided to offer $4000, but sensed the man's eagerness
+to sell and started to offer $1000. Suddenly it occurred to him that
+someone else might have made an offer. "I'll go $2000 and not a nickel
+more."
+
+"You've bought a ranch," the owner said.
+
+Elated, Fairbanks wrote a contract by candlelight on the spot. Both
+signed and they started back to find a notary. "I determined the fellow
+should not get out of my sight until the deed was recorded. If he wanted
+a drink of water, so did I. If he wished to speak to someone, I wanted a
+word with the same man."
+
+Finally the deal was closed and Fairbanks started home. Outside, he met
+Ed Metcalf, chuckling.
+
+"What's so funny, Ed?"
+
+Metcalf pointed to the departing seller. "He was just telling me about
+being worried to death all morning for fear a sucker he'd found would
+get out of his sight. He's been trying to unload his ranch for $500 and
+some idiot gave him $2000."
+
+Fairbanks also operated a freighting service to the boom towns in the
+gold belt as far north as Goldfield and Tonopah. Rates were fantastic
+and he made a fortune. He opened Beatty's first cafe in a tent.
+
+Money was plentiful and after a trip with a 16 mule team over rough
+roads to Goldfield, he was ready for a relaxing change to poker. When
+the white chips are $25, the reds $50, and the blues $500 the game is
+not for pikers and he would bet $10,000 as calmly as he would 10 cents.
+
+In such a game one night he found himself sitting beside a player who
+had removed his big overcoat with wide patch pockets and hung it on his
+chair. Fairbanks noticed the fellow had a habit of gathering in the
+discards when he wasn't betting and his deal would follow. He also
+noticed intermittent movements of the fellow's deft fingers to the big
+patch pocket and soon saw that every ace in the deck reposed in the
+pocket.
+
+Later in the game, Fairbanks opened a jackpot. Every man stayed. The
+crook raised discreetly and most of the players stayed. Fairbanks bet
+$1000.
+
+"Have to raise you $5000," the crook said.
+
+Fairbanks met the raise. "... and it'll cost you $5000 more," he said
+evenly.
+
+With the confidence that came from the cached aces, the sharper shoved
+out the five, smiled exultantly as he spread four kings and a deuce and
+reached for the pot.
+
+"Not so fast," Fairbanks said as he laid four aces and a ten on the
+table.
+
+The crook gave him a quick look. Fairbanks' eyes were steady. Neither
+said a word. The crook couldn't. He knew that Fairbanks' long fingers
+had found the big patch pocket.
+
+When three men and a jackass no longer made a crowd in Shoshone, Ralph
+Fairbanks became restless. With a population of 20--half of it his own
+progeny, he felt that civilization was closing in on him. "Charlie, I've
+been in one place too long...." He had now become "Dad Fairbanks" to all
+who knew him.
+
+The automobile was being increasingly used in desert travel and
+transcontinental trips were no longer a daring adventure or the result
+of a bet. Sixty miles south of Shoshone there was a wretched road that
+pitched down the washboard slope of one range into a basin, then up the
+gully-crossed slopes of another. Part of the transcontinental highway,
+it was a headache to the traveler. Radiators usually boiled down hill
+and up.
+
+To this desolate spot went Dad Fairbanks. The hot blasts from the dunes
+of the Devil's Playground and the dry bed of Soda Lake made summer a
+hell and the freezing winds from Providence Mountains turned it into a
+Siberian winter.
+
+Here in 1928 Dad Fairbanks built cabins and a store and installed a gas
+pump. Water was hauled in. "Coming or going," he said, "when they reach
+this place they've just got to stop, cool the engine, and fill up for
+the hill ahead." The place is Baker on Highway 91.
+
+Here, as at Shoshone, sales technique was tossed into the ash can.
+Stopping for dinner one day I met Dad coming out of the dining room.
+"How's the fare?" I asked.
+
+"Are you hungry?"
+
+"Hungry as a bear...."
+
+"All right. Go in. A hungry man can stand anything." Then in an
+undertone he added: "Employment agent sent me the world's worst cook.
+Take eggs."
+
+Later as we talked in the sheltered driveway a Rolls-Royce limousine
+drove up and a well-fed and smartly tailored tourist stepped out and
+spoke to Dad: "Do you know me?" he asked.
+
+Dad looked at him hesitantly. "Face is familiar."
+
+"You loaned me $300, 25 years ago."
+
+"I loaned a lotta fellows money."
+
+"But I never paid it back."
+
+"A helluva lot of 'em didn't," Dad said.
+
+The stranger reached into his pocket, pulled $1000 from a roll and
+handed it to Dad. "I'm Harry Oakes," he said. "Where's Ma?"
+
+So they went over to Dad's house and with Ma Fairbanks who had shared
+all of Dad's fortunes, good and bad, they sat down and Oakes talked of
+the long trail that led from 300 borrowed dollars to an annual income of
+five million.
+
+Harry Oakes had gone to Canada and learning that the legal title to a
+mining claim would expire at midnight on a certain date, he and his
+partner W. G. Wright sat up in a temperature of forty below, to relocate
+the Lakeshore Mine--Canada's richest gold property.
+
+Born in Maine, Harry Oakes became a subject of England and was at this
+time Canada's richest citizen, with an estimated fortune of
+$200,000,000.
+
+It was a long way from the Niagara palace back to Greenwater and
+Shoshone and as Ma Fairbanks and Dad and Harry sat in the plain little
+desert cottage, I couldn't keep from wondering why a man with
+$200,000,000 would wait 25 years to repay that $300.
+
+In his native town of Sangerville in Maine, Harry Oakes was criticized
+when, as a youngster with every opportunity to pursue a successful
+career according to the staid Maine formula, he became excited by gold.
+"Quick easy money." "Just a dreamer." He talked big, acted big, and was
+big.
+
+But Harry Oakes started out in life to make a fortune by finding a gold
+mine and you can't laugh aside the determination and courage with which
+he stuck to his purpose until he succeeded.
+
+Dad Fairbanks spent nearly 50 years in Death Valley country and it is a
+bit ironical that at last, the Baker climate drove him from the desert
+to Santa Paula and later, of all places, to Hollywood.
+
+"I should never have believed it of you," I kidded.
+
+"Hell--" Dad retorted, "I wanted solitude. Haven't you got enough sense
+to know that the lonesomest place on Godamighty's earth is a city?"
+
+He died in 1943 and at the funeral were the state's greatest men and its
+humblest--bankers, lawyers, doctors, beggarmen, muckers and miners, and
+with them, those he loved best--sun-baked fellows from the towns and the
+gulches along the burro trails. No man who has lived in Death Valley
+country did more to put the region on the must list of the American
+tourist and none won more of the regard and affections of the people.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XVII
+                          Shorty Frank Harris
+
+
+No history of Death Valley has been written in this century without
+mention of the Short Man--Frank (Shorty) Harris--and none can be.
+Previous pages have given most of his story. After his death at least
+two hurried writers who never saw him have stated that Shorty discovered
+no mines, knew little of the country.
+
+From a page of notes made before I had ever met him, I find this record:
+"Stopped at Independence to see George Naylor, early Inyo county sheriff
+and now its treasurer. We talked of early prospectors. Naylor said: 'I
+have known all of the old time burro men and have the records. Shorty
+Harris has put more towns on the map and more taxable property on the
+assessors' books than any of them.'"
+
+I first met Shorty at Shoshone. Entering the store one day, Charles
+Brown told me there was a fellow outside I ought to know, and in a
+moment I was looking into keen steady eyes--blue as water in a canyon
+pool--and in another Shorty Harris was telling me how to sneak up on
+$10,000,000. Thus began an acquaintance which was to lead me through
+many years from one end of Death Valley to the other, with Shorty,
+mentor, friend, and guide.
+
+Of course I had heard of him. Who hadn't? In the gold country of western
+deserts one could find a few who had never heard of Cecil Rhodes or John
+Hays Hammond, but none who had not heard of Shorty Harris. Wherever
+mining men gathered, the mention of his name evoked the familiar, "That
+reminds me," and the air thickened with history, laughter, and lies.
+
+He was five feet tall, quick of motion. Hands and feet small. Skin soft
+and surprisingly fair. Muscles hard as bull quartz. With a mask of
+ignorance he concealed a fine intelligence reserved for intimate friends
+in moments of repose.
+
+It is regrettable that since Shorty's death, writers who never saw him
+have given pictures of him which by no stretch of the imagination can be
+recognized by those who had even a slight acquaintance with him. Authors
+of books properly examine the material of those who have written other
+books. In the case of Shorty this was eagerly done--so eagerly in fact,
+that each portrayal is the original picture altered according to the
+ability of the one who tailors the tale. All are interesting but few
+have any relation to truth.
+
+Shorty Harris was so widely publicized by writers in the early part of
+the century that when the radio was invented, he was a "natural" for
+playlets and columnists. It was natural also that the iconoclast appear
+to set the world right. He employed Shorty to guide him through Death
+Valley. "I want to write a book," he explained, "and I have only three
+weeks to gather material."
+
+The trip ended sooner. "What happened?" I asked Shorty when I read the
+book and was startled to see in it a statement that Shorty became lost;
+had never found a mine; and never even looked for one.
+
+"Did he say that?" Shorty laughed.
+
+"And more of the same," I said.
+
+"Well, let's let it go for what it's worth.... He bellyached from the
+minute we set out."
+
+Those who knew Shorty best--Dad Fairbanks, Charles Brown, Bob
+Montgomery, George Naylor, H. W. Eichbaum, and the old timers on the
+trails had entirely different impressions. There was, however, around
+the barrooms of Beatty and other border villages a breed of later
+comers--"professional" old timers always waiting and often succeeding in
+exchanging "history" for free drinks. Though they may have never known
+Shorty in person, they were not lacking in yarns about him and rarely
+failed to get an audience.
+
+There were also among Shorty's friends a few who had another attitude.
+"What has he ever done that I haven't?" the answer being that nothing
+had been written about them.
+
+With variations the original pattern became the pattern for the
+succeeding writer. In the interest of accuracy it is not amiss to say
+that Shorty Harris was not buried standing up. The writer saw him
+buried. It is not true that he ever protested the removal of the road
+from the site of the place where he wished to be buried, because he
+never knew that he would be buried there. Nor did he have the remotest
+idea that a monument would be erected to him, because the idea of the
+monument was born after his death, as related elsewhere.
+
+He did not leave Harrisburg on July 4, 1905 to get drunk at Ballarat.
+Instead, he went to Rhyolite to find Wild Bill Corcoran, his grubstaker.
+
+He did enjoy the yarns attributed to him and their publication in
+important periodicals. But he was also painfully shy and ill at ease
+away from his home. Even at the annual Death Valley picnics held at
+Wilmington, near Los Angeles, he could never be persuaded to face the
+crowds.
+
+One cannot laugh aside the part he played nor the monument that honors
+one of God's humblest. His strike at Rhyolite brought two railroads
+across the desert, gave profitable employment to thousands of men, added
+extra shifts in steel mills and factories making heavy machinery and
+those of tool makers. The building trades felt it, banks, security
+exchanges, and scores of other industries over the nation--all because
+Shorty Harris went up a canyon. And it is not amiss to ask if these
+historians did their jobs as well.
+
+At my home it was difficult to get Shorty to accept invitations to
+dinners to which he was often invited by service clubs, but in the
+Ballarat cabin he was as sure of himself as the MacGregor with a foot
+upon his native heath and an eye on Ben Lomond.
+
+His passion for prospecting was fanatical. I asked him once if he would
+choose prospecting as a career if he had his life to live over.
+
+"I wouldn't change places with the President of the United States. My
+only regret is that I didn't start sooner. When I go out, every time my
+foot touches the ground, I think 'before the sun goes down I'll be worth
+$10,000,000.'"
+
+"But you don't get it," I reminded him.
+
+He stared at me with a sort of "you're-too-dumb" look. "Who in the hell
+wants $10,000,000? It's the game, man--the game."
+
+Nor is the picture of his profligacy altogether true. Despite Shorty's
+disregard for money he had a canniness that made him cache something
+against the rainy day. At Lone Pine Charlie Brown was packing Shorty's
+suit case before taking him to a doctor. "Shorty, what's this lump in
+the lining of your vest?"
+
+"Oh, there was a hole in it. Poor job of mending I guess," Shorty
+answered guilelessly.
+
+"I'll see," Charlie said and ripping a few stitches removed $600 in
+currency.
+
+Shorty's last years furnish a story of a man too tough to die. He had
+had three major operations, when in 1933 I received the following
+telegram: "Wall fell on me. Hurry. Bring doctor. Shorty Harris." It had
+been sent by Fred Gray from Trona, 27 miles from Ballarat, nearest
+telegraph station.
+
+My wife and I hurried through rain, snow, sleet; over washed out desert
+and mountain roads. Outside the cabin in the dusk, shivering in a cold
+wind, we found two or three of Shorty's friends and Charles and Mrs.
+Brown, who had also made a mad dash of 150 miles over roads--some of
+which hadn't been traveled in 30 years.
+
+Puttering around his cabin, Shorty had jerked at a wire anchored in the
+walls and brought tons of adobe down upon himself. He was literally dug
+out, his ribs crushed, face black with abrasions. With rapidly
+developing pneumonia he had lain for 60 hours without medical attention
+and with nothing to relieve pain. We learned later from Dr. Walter
+Johnson, who had preceded us, that if a hospital had been within a block
+it would have been fatal to move him. All agreed that Death sat on
+Shorty's bedside.
+
+"A cat has only nine lives," Fred Gray said gravely, and outside in the
+gathering gloom we planned his funeral. Because of the isolation of
+Ballarat and lack of communication we arranged that when the end came,
+Fred Gray would notify Brown and bring the body down into Death Valley
+for burial. There we would meet the hearse.
+
+Because bodies decompose quickly in that climate, time was important.
+While we planned these details, my wife, who had been at Shorty's
+bedside, joined us. "Shorty's not going to die," she said. "He's
+planning that trip up Signal Mountain you and he have been talking
+about."
+
+I tiptoed into the room. He was staring at the ceiling, seeing faraway
+canyons; the yellow fleck in a broken rock. Suddenly he spoke: "I'm
+losing a thousand dollars a day lying here. Why, that ledge--"
+
+A week after returning to our home we received another telegram from
+Trona asking that we come for him. He had insisted upon being laid in
+the bed of a pickup truck and taken across the Slate Range to Trona,
+where we met him.
+
+At our home he lay on his back for weeks, fed with a spoon. Always
+talking of putting another town on the map. Always losing a million
+dollars a day. He was miraculously but slowly recovering when an
+Associated Press dispatch bearing a Lone Pine date made front page
+headlines with an announcement of his death.
+
+Though the report was quickly corrected, his presence at our house
+brought reporters, photographers, old friends, and the merely curious.
+At the time the Pacific Coast Borax Company's N.B.C. program was
+featuring stories based on his experiences over a nation-wide hook-up.
+Among the callers also were moguls of mining and tycoons of industry who
+had stopped at the Ballarat cabin to fall under the spell of his ever
+ready yarns.
+
+Among these guests, one stands out.
+
+It was a hot summer day when I saw on the lawn what appeared to be a big
+bear, because the squat, bulky figure was enclosed in fur. Answering the
+door bell I looked into twinkling eyes and an ingratiating smile. "They
+told me in Ballarat that Shorty Harris was here." I invited him in.
+
+"I'll just shed this coat," he said, stripping off the bearskin garment.
+"... sorta heavy for a man going on 80." He laid it aside. "It's double
+lined. Fur inside and out. You see, I sleep in it. Crossed three
+mountain ranges in that coat before I got here. May as well take this
+other one off too." He removed another heavy overcoat, revealing a cord
+around his waist. "Keep this one tied close. Less bulky...."
+
+Under a shorter coat was a heavy woolen shirt and his overalls concealed
+two pairs of pants. He went on: "I was with Shorty at Leadville. My
+name's Pete Harmon. We ought to be rich--both of us. Why, I sold a hole
+for $2500 in 1878. Thought I was smart. They've got over $100,000,000
+outa that hole. I was at Bridgeport when I heard Shorty was sick, so I
+says, 'I'll just step down to Ballarat and see him.' (The 'step' was 298
+miles.) When I got there Bob Warnack tells me he's in Los Angeles. When
+I get there they tell me he's with you. So I just stepped out here."
+
+He had "stepped" 481 miles to see his friend.
+
+I ushered him in and left them alone. After an hour I noticed Pete
+outside, smoking. I went out and urged him to return and smoke inside,
+but he refused. "It's not manners," he insisted.
+
+Later I happened to look out the window and saw him empty the contents
+of a small canvas sack into his hand. There were a few dimes and nickels
+and two bills. He unfolded the currency. One was a twenty. The other, a
+one. He put the coins in the sack and came inside. A few moments later,
+from an adjacent room I heard his soft, lowered voice: "Shorty, I'm
+eatin' reg'lar now and got a little besides. I reckon you're kinda shy.
+You take this."
+
+"No--no, Pete. I'm getting along fine...."
+
+I fancy there was a scurry among the angels to make that credit for Pete
+Harmon.
+
+Late in the afternoon Pete donned his coats. "I'd better be going. I've
+got a lotta things on hand. A claim in the Argus. When the money comes
+in, well--I always said I was going to build a scenic railroad right on
+the crest of Panamint Range. Best view of Death Valley. It'll pay. How
+far is it to San Diego?"
+
+"A hundred and forty miles...."
+
+"Well, since I'm this far along I'll just step down and see my old
+partner. Take care of Shorty...." And down the road he went.
+
+With humility I watched his passage, hoping that the good God would go
+with him and somehow I felt that of all those with fame and wealth or of
+high degree who had gone from that house, none had left so much in my
+heart as Pete.
+
+During this period of convalescence Shorty was often guest in homes of
+luxury and when at last I took him to Ballarat I was curious to see what
+his reaction would be to the squalor of the crumbling cabin.
+
+When we stepped from the car, he noticed Camel, the blind burro drowsing
+in the shade of a roofless dobe. "Old fellow," he said, "it's dam' good
+to see _you_ again...." I unloaded the car, brought water from the well
+and sat down to rest. Shorty sat in a rickety rocker braced with baling
+wire. I regarded with amusement the old underwear which he'd stuffed
+into broken panes; the bare splintered floor; the cracked iron stove
+that served both for cooking and heating. The wood box beside it. The
+tin wash pan on a bench at the door.
+
+Then I noticed Shorty was also appraising the things about--the hole in
+the roof; the box nailed to the wall that served as a cupboard. A
+half-burned candle by his sagging bed. For a long time he glanced
+affectionately from one familiar object to another and finally spoke:
+"Will, haven't I got a dam' fine home?"
+
+For ages poets have sung, orators have lauded, but so far as I'm
+concerned, Shorty said it better.
+
+The last orders from the surgeon had been, "Complete rest for three
+months."
+
+In the late afternoon we moved our chairs outside. The sun still shone
+in the canyons and after he had seen that all his peaks were in place,
+he turned to me: "I'm losing $5,000,000 a day sitting here. Soon as
+you're rested, we'll start. You'll be in shape by day after tomorrow,
+won't you?"
+
+I restrained a gasp as he pointed to the side of a gorge 8000 feet up on
+Signal Mountain. "No trip at all...."
+
+No argument could convince him that the trip was foolhardy and on the
+third day we started through Hall's Canyon opposite the Indian Ranch.
+The ascent from the canyon is so steep that in many places we had to
+crawl on hands and knees. The three and a half miles were made in seven
+hours, but on the return the inevitable happened. Shorty, exhausted,
+staggered from the trail and collapsed. When he rose, he wobbled, but
+managed to reach a bush and rolled under it. I ran to his side. It
+seemed the end. "You go ahead," he said weakly. "I'm through."
+
+I had given him all my water and exacting a promise that he would remain
+under the bush, I started for help at the Indian Ranch, to bring him
+out.
+
+Coming up, I had paid no attention to the trail and was uncertain of my
+way--which was further confused by criss-crossed trails of wild burros
+and mountain sheep. Coming to a canyon that forked, I was not sure which
+to take and panicked with fear took a sudden uncalculated choice and
+started up a trail. The desert gods must have guided my feet, for it
+proved to be the right one and an hour later I came upon the green
+seepage of water.
+
+I dug a hole; let the scum run off then drank slowly and lay down to
+rest. In my last conscious moment a huge rattler passed within a few
+inches of my face. But rattlers were unimportant then and I went to
+sleep.
+
+The swish of brush awoke me and I saw Shorty staggering down the trail.
+He fell beside the water and was instantly asleep. Time I knew, was the
+measure of life and I allowed him twenty minutes to rest, then awoke him
+and made him go in front. On a ledge, he slumped again, his body hanging
+over the cliff with a 1000 foot fall to rocks below.
+
+I managed to catch him by the seat of his trousers as he began to slip,
+and dragged him back on the trail. Somehow I got him to the bottom.
+There the canyon widens upon a level area covered with dense growth.
+Walking ahead I suddenly missed him. He had crawled from the trail and
+it required an hour to find him and this I did by the noise of his
+rattly breathing.
+
+I half carried, half dragged him to the car and lifted him in. He was
+asleep before I could close the door and remained unconscious for the
+entire 11 miles of corduroy road to Ballarat. There Fred Gray and Bob
+Warnack lifted him from the car and laid him on his bed. None of us
+believed that Shorty Harris would ever leave that bed alive.
+
+The next morning I tiptoed softly out of the room, went over to the old
+saloon and had breakfast with Tom, the caretaker. Afterward we sat
+outside smoking and talking of Hungry Hattie's feuding and her sister's
+mining deals, when we heard steady thumping sounds coming from Shorty's
+place. We looked. Bareheaded, Shorty Harris was chopping wood.
+
+Shorty was born near Providence, Rhode Island, July 2, 1856. He had only
+a hazy memory of his parents. His father, a shoemaker, died impoverished
+when Shorty was six years old. "... I went to live with my aunt. If she
+couldn't catch me doing something, she figured I'd outsmarted her and
+beat me up on general principles."
+
+At nine he ran away and obtained work in the textile mills of Governor
+William Sprague, dipping calico. The village priest taught him to read
+and write and apart from this, his only school was the alley. The
+curriculum of the alley is hunger, tears, and pain but somehow in that
+alley he found time to play and learned that with play came laughter.
+Thenceforth life to Shorty Harris was just one long playday.
+
+In 1876 he started West and crawled out of a boxcar in Dodge City,
+Kansas. About were stacks of buffalo hides, bellowing cattle,
+"chippies," gamblers, cow hands, and a chance for youngsters who had
+come out of alleys.
+
+"... Among those I remember at Dodge City were my friends Wyatt Earp and
+a thin fellow with a cough. If he liked you he'd go to hell for you. He
+was Doc Holliday--the coldest killer in the West. I had a job in a
+livery stable. Job was all right, but too much gunplay. Cowboys shooting
+up the town. Gamblers shooting cowboys."
+
+Flushed with his pay check, Shorty wandered into a saloon and met one of
+the percentage girls--a lovely creature, not altogether bad. They danced
+and Shorty suggested a stroll in the moonlight. And soon Shorty was in
+love.
+
+"Shorty," she asked, "why be a sucker? Why don't you go to Leadville?
+You might find a good claim."
+
+"I'm broke," he told her.
+
+"I've got some money," she said, and reached into her purse.
+
+"I'm no mac," he snapped.
+
+Finally she thrust the bills into his pocket.
+
+At Leadville he went up a gulch. Luck was kind. He found a good claim
+and going into Leadville sold it for $15,000. Later it produced
+millions. Within a week he was penniless. "Why, all I've got to do is to
+go up another gulch," he told sympathetic friends.
+
+On this trip his feet were frozen and he was carried out on the back of
+his partner. Taken to the hospital, the surgeon told him that only the
+amputation of both feet could save his life.
+
+Telling a group of friends about it in the Ballarat cabin later, Shorty
+of course had to add a few details of his own: "Dan Driscoll came to see
+me and I told him what the sawbones said. 'Why hell,' Dan says. 'Won't
+be nothing left of you. You've got to get outa here. When that nurse
+goes, I'll take you to a doc who'll save them feet.' And the first thing
+I knew I was in the other hospital.
+
+"The doc whetted his meat cleaver, picked up a saw and was about to go
+to work, when he found there was nothing to dope me with. 'I'll fix it,'
+Doc says, and wham--he slapped me stiff. I don't know what he did, but
+when I came to I was good as new."
+
+After selling a second claim to Haw Tabor, Shorty was again in the money
+and remembered the girl in Dodge City. Returning, he looked her up, took
+her to dinner. They danced and dined and Shorty toasted her in "bubble
+water." "I reckon everybody in Dodge City thought a caliph had come to
+town. No little girl suffered for new toggery. No bum lacked a tip. In a
+week I was broke again.
+
+"Going down to the freight yard to steal a ride on the rods I met the
+girl and the next I knew, I was begging her to marry me. 'Shorty, you
+don't know anything about my past, and still you want to marry me?'
+
+"'You don't know anything about my past either,' I said. But it was no
+go."
+
+Years afterward when Shorty and I were camped in Hall Canyon, I asked
+him if he would actually have married a girl like her.
+
+"Who am I to count slips?" he bristled. "I did ask her," and he swabbed
+a tear that had dried fifty years ago.
+
+In 1898, after working for a grubstake he started on the trip that led
+at last to Death Valley, by way of the San Juan country--one of the
+world's roughest regions. "I walked through Arizona, to Northern
+Mexico--every mile of it desert. A labor strike in Colonel Green's mines
+threw me out of a job and I started back. Ran out of water and lived
+five days on the juice of a bulbous plant--la Flora Morada. Each bulb
+has a few drops.
+
+"On the Mojave I ran out of water again. Finally saw a mangy old camel
+drinking at a pool. I had enough sense left to know there were no camels
+around and went on till I flopped. A fellow picked me up. I told him I'd
+been so goofy I'd seen a camel and water, but I knew it was just a
+mirage. 'You damned fool,' he said. 'It was a camel and you saw water.
+Hi Jolly turned that camel loose.'"
+
+Shorty reached Tintic, Utah, and from there walked over a waterless
+desert to the Johnnie mine, where he was given shelter, food, and
+clothing.
+
+Bishop Cannon of the Mormon Church sent him into the Panamint to
+monument a gold claim. "I was the only fool they could find to cross
+Death Valley in mid summer. I found the claim but it proved to be
+patented land."
+
+Shorty was recuperating from his last operation at my home when he came
+into the house one morning with fire in his eyes and a paper in his
+hand. "Read that and let's get going." (It has been erroneously stated
+that Shorty couldn't read. Though he had little schooling and a cataract
+impaired his sight, he could read to the end.)
+
+The paper announced a strike in Tuba Canyon near Ballarat. "Why, I know
+a place nobody ever saw but me and a few eagles...." His losses
+increased from a thousand to a million dollars a day because he wasn't
+on the job, and in May we started for Ballarat by the longer route
+through Death Valley.
+
+When we reached Jim Dayton's grave, he asked me to stop and getting out
+of the car, he walked into the brush, returning with a few yellow and
+blue wild flowers, laid them on Dayton's grave. "God bless you, old
+fellow. You'll have to move over soon and make room for me."
+
+Then turning to me, he said: "When I die bury me beside old Jim."
+Raising his hand and moving his finger as if he were writing the words,
+he added: "Above me write, 'Here lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket
+jackass prospector.'"
+
+It was his way of saying he had played his game--not by riding over the
+desert with a deluxe camping outfit, but the hard way--with beans and a
+single blanket. He was also saying, I think, goodbye to the Death Valley
+that he loved; its golden dunes, its creeping canyons and pots of gold.
+
+About one o'clock in the morning, Sunday, November 11, 1934, the phone
+awakened me. At the other end of the line was Charles Brown. Shorty
+Harris lay dead at Big Pine. "He just went to sleep and didn't wake up,"
+Charlie said.
+
+Shorty had died Saturday morning, November 10, and Charlie had arranged
+for the remains to be brought down into Death Valley and buried beside
+James Dayton Sunday afternoon.
+
+Out of Los Angeles, out of towns and settlements, canyons, and hills
+came the largest crowd that had ever assembled in Death Valley, to wait
+at Furnace Creek Ranch for the hearse that would come nearly 200 miles
+over the mountains from Big Pine. It was delayed at every village and by
+burro-men along the road, who wanted a last look upon the face of
+Shorty.
+
+At one o'clock the caravan arrived and then began the procession down
+the valley. The sun was setting and the shadows of the Panamint lay
+halfway across the valley when the grave was reached. Brown had sent
+Ernest Huhn from Shoshone the night previous, a distance of about 60
+miles, to dig the grave.
+
+On the desert a man dies and gets his measure of earth--often with not
+so much as a tarpaulin. With this in mind Ernie had made the hole to fit
+the man, but with the coffin it was a foot too short. While waiting for
+the grave to be lengthened, the casket was opened and in the fading
+twilight Shorty's friends passed in file about the casket, while the
+Indians, silhouetted against the brush paid silent tribute to him whom
+their fathers and now their children knew as "Short Man."
+
+So began the first funeral ever held in the bottom of Death Valley.
+Drama, packed into a few moments of a dying day. No discordant ballyhoo.
+No persiflage.... "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want...." A
+bugler stepped beside the grave and silvered notes of taps went over the
+valley. The casket was lowered into the grave as the stars came out, and
+he was covered with the earth he loved. Thoughtful women placed wreaths
+of athol and desert holly and, with his face toward his desert stars,
+Shorty Harris holed-in forever.
+
+Going back to Shoshone with the Browns, I told Charlie of the time I had
+stopped at Jim Dayton's grave with Shorty. "I made up my mind then that
+I would do something about his last wish. There's no liar like a
+tombstone, but Shorty deserves a marker."
+
+"I'll join you," Charlie said.
+
+Charlie consulted Park officials and they approved. Chosen to write the
+epitaph, I knew from the moment the task was assigned to me what it
+would be. In order to get the reaction of others to the use of the word
+"jackass" on the monument, I decided to try it out on the Browns. "This
+epitaph," I said, "may be unconventional, but unless I am mistaken it
+will be quoted around the world."
+
+I read it. "It's all right," Mrs. Brown laughed. Charlie approved. The
+epitaph, as predicted has been quoted and pictures of the plaque
+published around the world.
+
+It has been stated that the Pacific Coast Borax Company paid for the
+monument. Actually it was provided by the Park Service. I had the bronze
+tablet made in Pomona, California, and Charlie Brown insisted that he
+pay for it. "Shorty left a little money," he said. "Whatever is lacking,
+I will pay myself."
+
+On March 14, 1936, the monument was dedicated. Streamers of dust rolled
+along every road that led into the Big Sink trailing cars that were
+bringing friends from all walks of life to pay tribute to Shorty. At the
+grave the rich and the famous stood beside the tottering prospector, the
+husky miner, the silent, stoic Indian. Brown was master of ceremonies.
+Telegrams were read from John Hays Hammond and other distinguished
+friends. Old timers, whose memories spanned 30 years, one after another
+wedged through the crowd to tell a funny story that Shorty had told or
+some homely incident of his career.
+
+One was revealing: "We had the no-'countest, low-downest hooch drinking
+loafer on the desert at Ballarat. We called him Tarfinger. He came over
+to Shorty's cabin one day and said he was hungry. Shorty loaned him
+$5.00. When I heard about it I went over. I said, 'You know he's a
+no-good loafing thief.' I figured I was doing Shorty a favor. Instead,
+he blew up. 'Well, he can get as hungry as an honest man, can't he?'"
+
+They understood what O. Henry meant when he sang:
+
+  "Test the man if his heart be
+  In accord with the ultimate plan,
+  That he be not to his marring,
+  Always and utterly man."
+
+The epitaph Shorty Harris wanted seemed fitting: "_Above me write, 'Here
+lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket jackass prospector.'_"
+
+As I turned away I thought of the monuments erected to dead Caesars who
+had left trails of blood and ruin. Shorty Harris simply followed a
+jackass into far horizons, and by leaving a smile at every water hole, a
+pleasant memory on every trail, attained a fame which will last as long
+as the annals of Death Valley.
+
+
+
+
+                             Chapter XVIII
+                      A Million Dollar Poker Game
+
+
+Herman Jones, young Texan with keen blue eyes and a guileless grin,
+dropped off the train at Johnnie, a railroad siding, named for the
+nearby Johnnie mine. At the ripe age of 21 he had been through a
+shooting war between New Mexico cattle men, and needing money to marry
+the prettiest girl in the territory, he had come for gold.
+
+Finding it lonesome on his first night he sought the diversion of a
+poker game in a saloon and gambling house. He bought a stack of chips,
+sat down facing the bar and a moment later another stranger entered,
+inquired if he could join the game.
+
+Told that $20 would get a seat, the stranger standing with his back to
+the bar was reaching for his purse when Herman saw the bartender pick up
+a six-gun. With his elbows on the bar and his pistol in two hands, he
+aimed the gun at the back of the stranger's head and pulled the trigger.
+
+The victim dropped instantly to the floor, his brains scattered on the
+players. The poker session adjourned and Jones was standing outside a
+few moments later when he was tapped on the shoulder. "Come on," he was
+told. "We're giving that fellow a floater." Herman didn't know what a
+floater was, but decided it was best to obey orders and followed the
+leader into the saloon.
+
+Approaching the bartender, the spokesman pulled out his watch. "Bob," he
+said quietly. "It's six o'clock. It won't be healthy around here after
+6:30." He set a canteen on the bar and walked out.
+
+Without a word, the bartender pulled off his coat, gathered up the cash,
+called the painted lady attached to his fortune and said, "Sell out for
+what you can get. I'll let you know where I am." Picking up his hat he
+left. No one ever learned the cause of the murder or the identity of the
+dead.
+
+With no luck in the Johnnie district or at Greenwater, Herman left the
+latter place on a prospecting trip in partnership with another luckless
+youngster previously mentioned--Harry Oakes.
+
+On a hill overlooking the dry bed of the Amargosa River about four miles
+north of Shoshone, he saw a red outcropping on a hill so steep he
+decided nothing that walked had ever reached the summit, and for that
+reason he might find treasure overlooked.
+
+Herman, being lean and agile, climbed up to investigate. Oakes remained
+under a bush below. Jones returned with a piece of ore showing color. A
+popular song of the period was called "Red Wing" and because he liked
+sentimental ballads, Herman named it for the song. Camp was made at the
+bottom of the hill. Oakes assumed the dish washing job to offset an
+extra hour which Herman agreed to give to work on the trail. Somebody
+told Oakes how to bake bread and while Herman was wheeling muck to the
+dump, Harry experimented with his cookery. The bread turned out to be
+excellent and Oakes took the day off to show it to friends.
+
+"That's the sort of fellow Harry was," Herman says. "You just couldn't
+take him seriously."
+
+The Red Wing didn't pay and when abandoned, all they had to show for
+their labor was a stack of bills. On borrowed money, Oakes left the
+country. Herman remained to pay the bills.
+
+
+A few miles east of Shoshone is Chicago Valley, which began in a
+startling swindle, and ended in fame and fortune for one defrauded
+victim.
+
+A convincing crook from the Windy City found government land open to
+entry and called it Chicago Valley. It was a desolate area and the only
+living thing to be seen was an occasional coyote skulking across or a
+vulture flying over. The promoter needed no capital other than a good
+front, glib tongue, and the ability to lie without the flicker of a
+lash.
+
+A few weeks later Chicago widows with meager endowments, scrub women
+with savings, and some who coughed too much from long hours in sweat
+shops began to receive beautifully illustrated pamphlets that described
+a tropical Eden with lush fields, cooling lakes, and more to the point,
+riches almost overnight. For $100 anyone concerned would be located.
+
+Soon people began to swing off The Goose, as the dinky train serving
+Shoshone was called, and head for Chicago Valley. Among the victims was
+a widow named Holmes with a family of attractive, intelligent children.
+One of these was a vivacious, beautiful teen-ager named Helen.
+
+The Holmes were handicapped because of tuberculosis in the family. This
+in fact had induced the widow to invest her savings.
+
+Herman Jones used to ride by the Holmes' place en route to the Pahrump
+Ranch on hunting trips and owning several burros, he thought the Holmes'
+children would like to have one. Taking the donkey over, he told Helen,
+"You can use him to work the ranch too. Better and faster than a
+hoe...." He brought a harness and a cultivator, showed her how to use
+the implement.
+
+It was inevitable that investors in Chicago Valley would lose their
+time, labor, and money.
+
+Thus when Helen Holmes returned the burro to Herman one day, Herman was
+not surprised when she told him she was on her way to Los Angeles to
+look for a job.
+
+"But what can you do?"
+
+"I wish I knew. I can get a job washing dishes or waiting on table."
+
+Shortly afterward he heard from her--just a little note saying she was a
+hello girl on a switchboard. "Knew she'd land on her feet," Herman
+grinned, and having a bottle handy he gurgled a toast to Helen. He had
+to tell the news of course and with each telling he produced the bottle.
+
+So he was in a pleasant mood when somebody suggested a spot of poker. To
+mention poker in Shoshone is to have a game and in a little while Dad
+Fairbanks, Dan Modine, deputy sheriff, Herman, and two or three others
+were shuffling chips over in the Mesquite Club.
+
+Herman had the luck and quit with $700. "Fellows," he said as he folded
+his money, "take a last look at this roll. You won't see it again."
+
+"Oh, you'll be back," Fairbanks said.
+
+But Herman didn't come back. Instead he went to Los Angeles, found Helen
+at the switchboard. She confided excitedly that she had a chance to get
+into the movies as soon as she could get some nice clothes.
+
+"Fine," Herman said. "When can I see you?" He made a date for dinner,
+had a few more drinks and when he met her he had a comfortable binge and
+a grand idea. "... Listen Helen. You wouldn't get mad at a fool like me
+if I meant well, would you?"
+
+"Why Herman--you know I wouldn't," she laughed.
+
+"I'm a little likkered and it's kinda personal...."
+
+"But you're a gentleman, Herman--drunk or sober...."
+
+"I've been thinking of this picture business. I nicked Dad Fairbanks in
+a poker game. You know how I am. Lose it all one way or another. You
+take it and buy what you need and it'll do us both some good."
+
+The refusal was quick. "It's sweet of you Herman, but not that. I just
+couldn't."
+
+"You can borrow it, can't you ... so I won't drink it up?"
+
+The argument won and soon theater goers all over the world were
+clutching their palms as they watched the hair-raising escapes from
+death that pictured "The Perils of Pauline"--the serial that made Helen
+Holmes one of the immortals of the silent films. She died at 58, on July
+8, 1950.
+
+When Charlie Brown became Supervisor in charge of Death Valley roads, he
+wanted a foreman who knew the country. Herman Jones had hunted game,
+treasure, fossils, artifacts of ancient Indians all over Death Valley
+and knew the water courses, the location of subterranean ooze, the dry
+washes which when filled by cloudbursts were a menace. Brown made him
+foreman of the road crew.
+
+At Shoshone, Herman Jones, grey now, was tinkering with a battered Ford
+when a big Rolls-Royce stopped. He looked around at the slam of the
+door, stared a moment at the man approaching, dropped his tools, wiped
+his hands on a greasy rag. "Well, I'll be--" he laughed. "Harry
+Oakes--where've you been all these years?"
+
+"Oh, knocking around," grinned Oakes. "Wanted to see this country
+again."
+
+They sat in the shade of a mesquite, talked over Greenwater days and the
+homely memories that leap out of nowhere at such a time.
+
+Oakes noticed Herman's Ford. Then he pointed to the $20,000 worth of
+long, sleek Rolls-Royce. "Herman, I'm going back to New York in a plane.
+I want to make you a present of that car."
+
+Herman Jones, dumbfounded for a moment, looked at his Ford, smiled, and
+shook his head. "Thanks just the same, Harry. That old jalopy's plenty
+good for me." No amount of persuasion could make him accept it.
+
+Knowing that Herman Jones could use any part of $20,000, I marvelled
+that he didn't accept the proffered gift. Then I remembered that the
+Redwing had produced only sweat and debts and Jones had paid the debts
+through the bitter years.
+
+In the little town of Swastika in the province of Ontario, Canada, you
+will be told that Oakes was booted off the train there because he was
+dead-beating his way. The country had been prospected, pronounced
+worthless and nobody believed there was pay dirt except a Chinaman.
+
+Harry Oakes had an ear for anybody's tale of gold and listened to the
+Chinaman. He was 38 years old. Lady Luck had always slammed the door in
+his face but this time, (January, 1912) she flung it open. Eleven years
+later Oakes was rich.
+
+He had always talked on a grand scale even when broke at Shoshone. With
+a taste for luxury he began to gratify it. He bought a palatial home at
+Niagara Falls and served his guests on gold platters. As his fortune
+increased he gave largely to charities and welfare projects such as city
+parks, playgrounds, hospitals. These gifts lead one to believe that the
+belated payment of $300 borrowed from Dad Fairbanks was a calculated
+delay so that Harry Oakes could enjoy the little act he put on at Baker.
+
+During World War I he gave $500,000 to a London hospital, was knighted
+by King George V in 1939. He became a friend of the Duke of Windsor and
+at his Nassau residence was often the host to the Duke and his Duchess,
+the amazing Wallis Warfield, Baltimore girl who went from a boarding
+house to wed a British king.
+
+Sir Harry Oakes was murdered in the palatial Nassau home, July 7, 1943,
+allegedly by a titled son-in-law who was later acquitted--a verdict
+denounced by many.
+
+_In connection with the story of Helen Holmes told above, it should be
+explained that the original title was "Hazards of Helen" and following
+an old Hollywood custom, Pathe produced a new version called "Perils of
+Pauline." In this the heroine's part was taken by Pearl White._
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XIX
+                          Death Valley Scotty
+
+
+A strictly factual thumbnail sketch of Walter Scott would contain the
+following incidents:
+
+He ran away from his Kentucky home to join his brother, Warner, as a cow
+hand on the ranch of John Sparks--afterward governor of Nevada. He
+worked as a teamster for Borax Smith at Columbus Marsh. He had a similar
+job at Old Harmony Borax Works.
+
+In the Nineties he went to work with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. He
+married Josephine Millius, a candy clerk on Broadway, New York, and
+brought her to Nevada.
+
+He became guide, friend, companion, and major domo for Albert
+Johnson--Chicago millionaire who had come to the desert for his health.
+He did some prospecting in the early part of the century, but never
+found a mine of value.
+
+America was mining-mad following the Tonopah and Goldfield strikes and
+Scotty went East in search of a grubstake. He obtained one from Julian
+Gerard, Vice President of the Knickerbocker Trust Company and a brother
+of James W. Gerard who had married the daughter of Marcus Daly, Montana
+copper king and who was later U.S. Ambassador to Germany.
+
+Scotty staked a claim near Hidden Spring and named it The Knickerbocker.
+He gave Gerard glowing reports of a mine so rich its location must be
+kept secret.
+
+Scotty appeared in Los Angeles unheard of, in a ten gallon hat and a
+flaming necktie and with the natural showman's skill, tossed money
+around in lavish tips or into the street for urchins to scramble over.
+
+This was the well-staged prelude to the charter of the famed Scotty
+Special for a record-breaking run from Los Angeles to Chicago. Though
+Scotty stoutly denies it, he was lifted to fame by a big and talented
+sorrel-headed sports editor and reporter on the Los Angeles Examiner,
+named Charles Van Loan, and John J. Byrnes, passenger agent of the Santa
+Fe railroad. Scotty meant nothing to either of these men, but the
+publicity Byrnes saw for the Santa Fe did, and the red necktie, the big
+hat, the scattering of coins, and the secret mine made the sort of story
+Van Loan liked.
+
+Here Scotty's trail is lost in the fantastic stories of writers, press
+agents, and promoters. Several years afterward when his yarns began to
+backfire, Scotty swore in a Los Angeles court that E. Burt Gaylord, a
+New York man, furnished $10,000 for the Scotty Special's spectacular
+dash across the continent--the object being to promote the sale of stock
+in the "secret mine."
+
+More remarkable than any yarn Scotty ever told is the fact that although
+headlines made Scotty, headlines have failed to kill the Scotty legend.
+
+You may toss our heroes into the ash can, but we dust them off and put
+them back. Likable, ingratiating, Scotty will brush aside any attack
+with a funny story and let it go at that.
+
+In a law suit for an accounting against Scotty, Julian Gerard asserted
+he was to have 22-1/2% of any treasure Scotty found. Judge Ben Harrison
+decided in Gerard's favor, but the only claim found in Scotty's name was
+the utterly worthless Knickerbocker and Gerard got nothing. The claim
+showed little sign of ever having been worked. A few broken rocks. A few
+holes which could be filled with a shovel within a few moments.
+
+Passing the claim once, I stopped to talk with a native: "This is the
+scene of the Battle of Wingate Pass," he told me. "In case you never
+heard of it, it was fought for liberty, Scotty's liberty--that is.
+Gerard got suspicious about Scotty's mine and decided to send his own
+engineers out to investigate. He ordered Scotty to meet them at Barstow
+and show them something or else. It worried Scotty a little, not long.
+He'd learned about Indian fighting with Buffalo Bill and met the fellows
+as ordered. When he led them to his wagon waiting behind the depot, the
+Easterners took a look at the wagon, another look at Scotty and one at
+each other. The wagon had boiler plate on the sides, rifles stacked army
+fashion alongside. Outriders with six-guns holstered on their belts and
+Winchesters cradled in their arms.
+
+"'Don't let it worry you,' Scotty said. 'Piutes on the warpath. Old
+Dripping Knife, their Chief claims my gold belongs to them. Dry-gulched
+a couple of my best men last week.'
+
+"The Easterners turned white and Scotty gave 'em another jolt.
+'Butchered my boys and fed 'em to their pigs. But we are fixed for 'em
+this trip. They sent word they aim to exterminate us. Maybe try it, but
+I've got lookouts planted all along. Let's go....' He shunted them
+aboard, shaking in their knees and headed out of Barstow.
+
+"The party had reached that hill you see when suddenly out of the brush
+and the gulches and from behind the rocks came a horde of 'redskins,'
+yelling and shooting. Scotty's men leaped from their saddles and the
+battle was on. The Easterners jumped out of the wagon and hit the ground
+running for the nearest dry wash and that was the closest they ever got
+to Scotty's mine. You've got to hand it to Scotty."
+
+The story made front page from coast to coast and it was several days
+before the hoax was revealed. Unexplained though undenied, was the
+statement that Albert Johnson was in Scotty's party listed as "Doctor
+Jones." It is assumed that he had no guilty knowledge of the hoax.
+
+The most astounding achievement of Scotty's career was attained when he
+interested in an imaginary Death Valley mine, Al Myers, a hard-bitten
+prospector and mining man who had made the discovery strike at
+Goldfield; Rol King, of Los Angeles, bon vivant and manager of the
+popular Hollenbeck Hotel, and Sidney Norman who as mining editor of the
+Los Angeles Times knew mines and mining men.
+
+These were certainly not the gullible type. But with a yarn of gold,
+Scotty induced them to hazard a trip into Death Valley in mid-summer
+when the temperature was 124 degrees.
+
+Scotty may have missed the acquisition of a good mine when he failed to
+find one lost by Bob Black. While hunting sheep in the Avawatz Range,
+Bob found some rich float. "Honest," Bob said, "I knocked off the quartz
+and had pure gold." He tried to locate the ledge but he couldn't match
+his specimen. Later he returned with Scotty, but a cloudburst had mauled
+the country. They found the corners of Bob's tepee, but not the ledge.
+They made several later attempts to find it, but failed.
+
+Bob always declared that some day he would uncover the ledge and might
+have succeeded if he hadn't met Ash Meadows Jack Longstreet one day when
+both were full of desert likker. Bob passed the lie. Jack drew first.
+Taps for Bob.
+
+
+All kinds of stories have been told to explain Albert Johnson's
+connection with Scotty. The first and the true one is that Johnson,
+coming to the desert for his health, hired Scotty as a guide, liked his
+yarns and his camping craft and kept him around to yank a laugh out of
+the grim solitude.
+
+But that version didn't appeal to the old burro men. They could believe
+in the hydrophobic skunks or the Black Bottle kept in the county
+hospital to get rid of the old and useless, but not in a Santa Claus
+like Albert Johnson. "It just don't make sense--handing that sort of
+money to a potbellied loafer like Scotty...."
+
+Albert Johnson was able to afford any expenditure to make his life in a
+difficult country less lonely. He could have searched the world over and
+found no better investment for that purpose than Scotty.
+
+Genial, resourceful, and never at a loss for a yarn that would fit his
+audience, Scotty was cast in a perfect role. As a matter of fact,
+whatever it cost Johnson for Scotty's flings in Hollywood, or alimony
+for Scotty's wife, it probably came back in the dollar admissions that
+tourists paid to pass the portals of the Castle for a look at Scotty. Of
+course they seldom saw Scotty--never in later years. Mrs. Johnson was an
+intensely religious woman and didn't like liquor and that disqualified
+Scotty.
+
+"This is Scotty's room," the attendant would say. "And that's his bed."
+
+"Oh, isn't he here?"
+
+"Not today. Scotty's a little under the weather. Went over to his shack
+so he wouldn't be disturbed...."
+
+Mrs. Johnson was killed in an auto driven by her husband in Towne's Pass
+when, to avoid going over a precipice, he headed the machine into the
+wall of a cut.
+
+In 1939 Albert Johnson testified that he first met Scotty in Johnson's
+Chicago office when a wealthy friend appeared with Scotty, who was
+looking for a grubstake. Johnson said he gave Scotty "something between
+$1000 and $5000." When the attorney asked him to be more definite,
+Johnson replied that at the time, his income was between one-half
+million and two million dollars a year and the exact amount consequently
+was of no importance then. "Since then," Johnson testified, "I have
+given him $117,000 in cash and about the same in grubstakes, mules,
+food, and equipment."
+
+They went together into the mountains as Johnson explained, "because I
+was all hepped up with his ... claims." Further explaining his
+connection with Scotty, he said: "I was crippled in a railroad accident.
+My back was broken. I was paralyzed from the hips down. Through the
+years I got to have a great fondness for him."
+
+Albert Johnson, whose fortune came from the National Insurance Company,
+died in 1948, leaving a will that contained no mention of Scotty.
+
+But one laurel none can deny Walter Scott. He did more to put Death
+Valley on the must list of the American tourists than all the histories
+and all the millions spent for books, pamphlets, and radio broadcasts.
+
+
+The almost incredible case of Jack and Myra Benson proves that P. T.
+Barnum was not wholly wrong in his dictum regarding the birthrate of
+suckers.
+
+Newly married in Montana they loaded their car and set out to seek
+fortune in the West. "We didn't know anything about gold," Jack
+confided. "If anyone had told us to throw a forked stick up a hillside
+and dig where it fell, we would have done it."
+
+Near Parker, Arizona, they were having supper in camp when another
+traveler stopped and asked permission to erect his tent nearby. Myra
+invited him to share their supper and during the meal the stranger told
+them he was a chemist and that he had prospected over most of the West.
+He had found a clay that cured meningitis, he said, and this had led to
+fortune. In one town he had found the entire population, including
+doctors and nurses down and out. The clay had cured them within a week.
+Among the cured, was the son of a rich woman who had given him $5000.
+
+Grateful for the fate that had brought this man into their lives, the
+Bensons confided that they had hoped to reach the California gold
+fields, but car trouble had depleted their cash and asked if he knew of
+any place where they could pan gold.
+
+"Go to Silver Lake, in San Bernardino County, California," he advised
+them, "and your troubles will be over. On the edges of the lake is a
+thick mud. Get some tanks and boil it. You'll have a residue of gold."
+
+Jack and Myra set out over the Colorado Desert; then climbed the
+Providence Mountains to worry through the deep blow sand of the Devil's
+Playground. After three gruelling weeks they reached the lake. There
+they boiled the mud. Then an old prospector became curious about their
+unusual performance. The world slipped out from under the Bensons when
+he told them they were the victims of a liar.
+
+With $5.00 they headed for Death Valley; found themselves broke and
+gasless at Cave Spring. Jack knocked upon the door of a shack he saw
+there. The woman who opened the door was Jack's former school teacher,
+Mrs. Ira Sweatman, who was keeping house for her cousin, Adrian
+Egbert--there for his health.
+
+Those who traveled the Death Valley road by way of Yermo and Cave Spring
+will remember that every five miles tacked to stake or bush were signs
+that read: "Water and oil." This was Adrian Egbert's fine and practical
+way of aiding the fellow in trouble.
+
+Myra and Jack later acquired a claim near Rhodes Spring, a short
+distance from Salsbury Pass road into Death Valley and moved there to
+develop it. I had been away from Shoshone with no contacts and returning
+was surprised to find Myra there. I inquired about Jack.
+
+"Why, haven't you heard?" she asked, and from the expression in her eyes
+I knew that Jack was dead.
+
+As best I could, I expressed my condolence, knowing how deeply she had
+loved.
+
+She said: "He went up to the tunnel to set off three blasts. I heard
+only two. He was to come after the third blast. I knew something was
+wrong and went up. Bigod, Mr. Caruthers, Jack's head was blown off to
+hellangone...."
+
+Myra's language failed to mask the grief her welling eyes disclosed.
+
+Only once in her long, helpful life did Myra ever stoop to deception.
+The old age pension law was passed and Myra was entitled to and needed
+its benefits, but Myra wouldn't sign the application. She made one
+excuse after another, but finally Stella Brown got at the bottom of her
+refusal. Myra had been married to Jack for 40 years and just didn't want
+him to find out that she was a year older than he. Mrs. Brown at last
+persuaded her to put aside her vanity.
+
+"Hell--" Jack grinned when told about it. "I knew her age when I married
+her."
+
+On cold winter nights Myra could always be found in the Snake House
+where a chair beside the stove was reserved for her. One night I said
+jestingly: "You never play poker. What are you doing here?"
+
+She whispered: "Wood's hard to get. I'm saving mine."
+
+Then came one of those mornings when one's soul tingles with the feel of
+a perfect desert day and Myra was up early. She came to the store.
+
+"What got you up at this hour?" Bernice asked.
+
+"I felt too dam' good to stay indoors...."
+
+There were a few old timers in the store and these surrounded
+her--because she was the kind who could tell you that it was hotter than
+hell, in a thrilling way. She bought a few groceries and started back to
+her cabin. Friendly eyes followed her passage along a path across the
+playground of the little school. Children sliding down the chute or
+riding teeter boards, waved affectionately. Myra was seen to falter in
+her step, then sag to the sand. The children ran to her aid and in a
+moment Shoshone was gathering about her. Myra Benson was dead.
+
+Sam Flake, nearing 80, on the fringe of the crowd paid his simple
+tribute in a voice a bit shaky, but in language hard as the rock in the
+hills: "Dam' her old hide--us boys are going to miss Myra...." He turned
+aside, his hand pulling at the bandana in his hip pocket and Shoshone
+understood.
+
+Though she was buried 500 miles away, every man, woman, and child in
+Shoshone wanted a token of love to attend her and about the grave that
+received her casket was a wilderness of flowers.
+
+
+
+
+                               Chapter XX
+                     Odd But Interesting Characters
+
+
+In these pages the reader has seen familiar names--the favored of Lady
+Luck--but what of those who failed--the patient, plodding kind of whom
+you hear only on the scene? They too followed jackasses into hidden
+hills; made trails that led others to fortunes which built cities,
+industries, railroad; endowed colleges and made science function for a
+better world. To these humbler actors we owe more than we can repay.
+
+For nearly half a century John (Cranky) Casey roamed the deserts of
+California and Nevada looking for gold. His luck was consistently bad.
+Grim, tall, erect, with a deep slow voice, he was noted for picturesque
+speech which gained emphasis from an utterly humorless face.
+Congenitally he was an autocrat--his speech biting.
+
+A prospector whom Casey didn't like died and friends were discussing the
+disposition of the remains. "Chop his feet off," suggested Casey, "and
+drive him into the ground with a doublejack...."
+
+From others one could always hear tales of fortunes made or missed; of
+veins of gold wide as a barn door. But no trick of memory ever turned
+Casey's bull quartz into picture rock. "Never found enough gold to fill
+a tooth," he would say.
+
+Casey's leisure hours were spent over books and magazines, chiefly
+highbrow--particularly books and journals of science.
+
+A tenderfoot was brought in unconscious from Pahrump Valley. A city
+doctor happened to be passing through and after an examination of the
+victim, turned to the men in overalls and hobnail shoes, who'd brought
+him in: "He's suffering from a derangement of the hypothalamus."
+
+"Why in the hell don't you say he had a heat stroke?" Casey barked.
+
+A notorious promoter had a city victim ready for the dotted line.
+"Double your money in no time.... Samples show $200 to the ton...."
+Assuming all prospectors were crooked he called to Casey sitting nearby:
+"Casey, you know the Indian Tom claim?" "Yes, I know it," Casey
+thundered. "Not a fleck of gold in the whole dam' hill."
+
+In the thick silence that followed, the beaten rascal flushed, looked
+belligerently at Casey but Casey's big, hard fists he knew, could almost
+dent boiler plate and the long arms wrapped about a barrel, could crush
+it flat.
+
+In time Casey acquired an ancient flivver. Only his genius as a mechanic
+kept it going. There were lean years when it bore no license and he kept
+to little-traveled roads. The car, like Casey, was cranky and
+phlegmatic. One day as he was coming into Shoshone it balked in the
+middle of the road, coughed, shivered, and died. Inside the store it was
+120 degrees. Out on the road where Casey stopped it was probably 130.
+For two hours he patiently but vainly tried to coax it back to life.
+Finally he stood aside, wiped the grease from his gnarled hands, calmly
+stoked his pipe and shoved the car from the road. Then he gathered an
+armful of boulders and with a blasting of cussing that shook Shoshone he
+let go with a cannonade of stones that completed its ruin.
+
+At the age of ten Casey had been taken from the drift of a city's
+backwash and put in an orphanage. Nothing was known of his parentage or
+of relatives. He came to the desert after a colorful career as a
+conductor on the Santa Fe. The late E. W. Harriman, having gained
+control of the Southern Pacific system had his private car attached to a
+Santa Fe train for an inspection tour. At a siding on the Mojave Desert,
+Harriman wanted the train held a few moments. His messenger went to
+Casey, explaining that Harriman was the new boss of the Southern
+Pacific.
+
+"This is the Santa Fe," Casey bristled, looking at his watch. "I'm due
+in Barstow at 11:05 and bigod I'll be there."
+
+Aboard his train he was a despot and a stickler for the rules, demanding
+that even his superiors obey them. This finally was his downfall and he
+came to the desert.
+
+Elinor Glyn, who made the best seller list with "Three Weeks" in the
+early part of the century, came to Rawhide and Tex Rickard, spectacular
+gambler undertook to show her a bit of life a la Rawhide. He took her to
+the Stingaree district and later to a reception in his own place. The
+state's notables were presented to the lady along with Nat Goodwin,
+Julian Hawthorne, and others internationally known.
+
+Tex saw Casey standing alone at the end of the bar and knowing he was a
+voracious reader he went to Casey: "Come on and meet the author of Three
+Weeks...."
+
+"I've read it," Casey said. "They've hung folks for less."
+
+Casey's method of getting a job when his grub ran out was unique and
+unfailing. He would storm into the store and turn loose on Charlie, in
+charge of the roads and long his friend. "Who's keeping up these roads?
+Chuck holes in 'em big as the Grand Canyon ... disgrace--"
+
+"Been waiting for you to come in," Charlie would say with a sober face.
+"Get a shovel and fix 'em."
+
+A good conscientious worker, Casey would put the road in shape, pay his
+debts and again head into the horizon.
+
+You who spin through Death Valley or along its approaches owe much to
+Casey, who made many of the original road beds the hard way--with pick
+and shovel.
+
+At last Casey got the old age pension and his latter years were the
+best. His home, a dugout in the bank of a wash near Tecopa. With no
+rent, with books and magazines and the solitude he loved, he lived
+happily. "When I croak," he often said, "just put me in my dugout. Toss
+a stick of dynamite in after me. Shut the door and cave in the goddam'
+hill."
+
+One night he went to Tecopa. Friends were doing a spot of drinking and
+far behind in his score with the years, Casey joined them. There was
+nothing out of line. Just yarns and memories and Casey had a lot of
+these. Tonopah. Goldfield. Rawhide. Ely. Foundling days.
+
+"... They put me in a religious school. Had no relatives. In those days
+they whaled hell outa you just to see you squirm. 'Casey,' the teacher
+would ask, 'who swallowed the whale?' How did I know? Then he'd drag me
+off by the ear and blister my bottom. I shoved off one night. Been on
+the loose ever since."
+
+As he drank from his bottle of beer he suddenly slumped--and died
+instantly. Because of the intense heat, Maury Sorrells, now Supervisor
+but then Coroner, ordered immediate burial.
+
+Someone recalled Casey's wish to be put in the dugout and the hill blown
+up and started for the dynamite. But Whitey Bill McGarn warned that it
+would violate the law. One-eyed Casey--no relation, but long a friend,
+suggested a wake until the grave was dug. "It will be daylight then and
+we'll plant him in the wash right in front of his dugout."
+
+This was done as the sun came over the hills and I like to think that
+somewhere in the after life, all is well with Casey.
+
+
+Ben Brandt, previously mentioned, was a big blond man with child-like
+blue eyes, huge gnarled hands and the strength of an ox. He wore
+enormous boots, but when he bought new ones he always complained that
+they lacked traction and would go immediately to the dump, salvage an
+old tire casing and add two inches of reinforcement to the soles, with
+half a pound of hobnails. Ben then was ready for travel--provided he
+could find his burros.
+
+Near remote Quail Springs Ben dug a 4x4 mine shaft 75 feet deep, without
+aid. Descending by ladder he would fill a 10 gallon bucket with dirt,
+climb out and bring it to the surface. Day after day, month after month
+Ben applied the power of two strong arms and two strong legs. "With an
+engine you could do it in half the time," Ben was told. "I've got plenty
+of time," Ben drawled.
+
+Ben disdained gold in quartz formation. "I like placer. It's a poor
+man's game. If you find gold you put it in your poke and you've got
+spending money."
+
+Ben kept five burros and being industrious, never lacked a grubstake. He
+avoided argument except upon one subject, and that was burros versus
+Fords in prospecting. "I can get anywhere with my burros. I find stalled
+flivvers all over the desert and my burros drag 'em in."
+
+Ben believed that a burro had at least some of the intellectual powers
+of man. "Read a clock good as you," he said. "I worked my burro,
+Solomon, on a hoist. He didn't like it. I got up every morning at
+daylight, by an alarm clock. Slept out and kept the clock on a boulder
+at my head and got up when the alarm went off. One morning I woke up
+with the sun shining straight down in my eyes. It was noon. That burro
+had sneaked up and taken that clock down the canyon a mile away. Don't
+tell me they can't think! I sold him. Too smart."
+
+I asked Ben once what he would do if he suddenly found a million dollar
+claim. "I would build a monument a thousand feet high on top of
+Telescope Peak and dedicate it to burros."
+
+Such a monument would inadequately express the debt today's world owes
+that little beast. Here are some of the things that link your life to
+the burro:
+
+The springs and the mattress in the bed you were born on. The talc that
+powdered you. The soap that bathed you. The ring you slipped on the
+finger of the girl you love. The paint on your house. The glass in your
+windows. The tile in your bathroom. The enamel ware in your kitchen. The
+prescription your druggist fills. The fillings the dentist puts into
+your teeth. The coin and the currency you spend. The auto you ride in
+and finally the casket in which you leave this world.
+
+Wars have been won or lost and the credit of nations stabilized because
+a burro carried a prospector's grub into faraway hills.
+
+Ben's burros strayed and he'd just returned with them after a two days'
+hunt. He was sitting on the bench mopping his brow when Louise Grantham,
+the girl with the mine in the Panamint, came up. She needed pack animals
+to get the ore down to the road. She'd tried before, to trade her Ford
+pickup for Ben's burros, but he'd never shown a flicker of interest. In
+a voice pitched for Ben's ears, she said to Ernie Huhn: "If Ben didn't
+waste so much time hunting those jacks, he might find a mine."
+
+Ben cocked an ear, but made no comment.
+
+"Now take that Quail Springs hole," Louise went on. "If he had my pickup
+he could take off a wheel, put on a belt and haul up the muck in one
+tenth the time, and instead of hoofing it in the sun he could ride in a
+cool cab and haul his supplies in."
+
+There comes a weak moment in everyone's life and this was Ben's. He
+traded the burros for the Ford and one of the best prospectors on the
+desert was ruined forever.
+
+Ben had a mortal fear of women and nothing could convince him that any
+unattached woman wasn't always lying in wait for any loose man.
+
+Ben went into the Johnnie country to prospect and passing through I
+looked him up. He was living in a tin shack in the canyon leading to the
+old Johnnie Mine. I asked Ben about his luck.
+
+"Last prospecting I did was right out there." He pointed to the slope in
+front of his house. "Good placer ground too."
+
+"Why did you quit?"
+
+"Woman," Ben grumbled. "Don't know yet what come over me, but I took a
+woman for a partner." He pointed to a boulder a few hundred yards away.
+"There's where I wanted to start digging. It's rich dirt. She wanted to
+start up there near her shack."
+
+"Well, what difference did it make?" I asked.
+
+"I see you don't know women. I hadn't been working up there by her house
+no time before she called me to get her a bucket of water. Bucket was
+half full. Next day she wanted a board in the kitchen floor nailed down.
+Didn't need any nail. 'There's some fresh apple pie on the table,' she
+says. I told her I didn't like pie. I'm crazy about pie but I knew her
+game. She calculated if I ate with her two--three times I'd be a dead
+pigeon. So I told her she could have the claim and walked off."
+
+Ben struck a happier note when he informed me that he didn't need to
+work any more and at last had attained the one ambition of his life.
+"Come inside and I'll show you." Beaming as only a man can when he sits
+on top of the world, he approached a table and it flashed over me that I
+would see a certified check for a fortune.
+
+There was a cloth over the table and he carefully wiped his big hands
+before touching it. He wet his big, broad thumb and forefinger and gave
+them an extra wipe on the sides of his shirt, a wide smile on his face
+and I had a vicarious thrill that a man who could barely read and write
+had at last achieved that which he most wanted in life. He started to
+remove the cloth, but paused. "Always said if I ever struck it rich,
+first money I spent would be for one of these dinkuses."
+
+He flipped the cloth aside. I stared incredulous. It was a portable
+typewriter.
+
+He replaced the cover with the gentle care of a mother putting her baby
+to bed and I left him, sure that God was in his heaven with an eye on
+Ben.
+
+
+Contemporary with Ben was Joe Volmer, who lived in a dugout in Dublin
+Gulch. I had seen royalty from afar and once I had dined with a sultan
+on horsemeat and fried bananas, but no king ever attained the majesty of
+Joe. He was tall, erect, wore a white sailor's hat and carried a cane.
+His mustache was always waxed to a needle point, after the manner of
+Kaiser Wilhelm. Though he increased his small pension by selling home
+brew, he always managed to give the impression that he was descending to
+your level when he accepted the two bits you left on his table.
+
+He was neat as he was lordly and forever scrubbing his pots and pans. He
+kept the dugout immaculate and when I first saw him standing on the
+ledge in front of his door, calmly surveying the valley below, he posed
+like an Alexander the Great, with the world conquered and trussed at his
+feet.
+
+I had never seen him until one day a tourist came into the store and
+asked Charlie for a stop-watch. Charlie told him he didn't carry
+stop-watches. Shortly after the tourist had gone, Joe came in for a
+stop-watch. "Don't keep 'em," Charlie said. "Helluva store," Joe barked
+and strode out.
+
+"A curious coincidence," I said. "Two calls for a stop-watch in the same
+day away out here."
+
+"It's no coincidence," Charlie said. "Just Joe Volmer. He's in every day
+asking for something he knows I haven't got."
+
+After Joe left, Jack Crowley came for his mail. Brown was in the cage
+set apart for the post office. He had just received several sheets of
+six-cent stamps--twice as many as he needed. "Jack," he said, "when you
+see Joe tell him I'm out of six-cent stamps." Within an hour Joe shoved
+a five dollar bill through the window. "Give me five dollars' worth of
+six-cent stamps," he ordered. Brown picked up the bill, filled the order
+and never again did Joe ask for merchandise not in stock.
+
+Joe sold a claim and decided he needed a refrigerator to keep the beer
+cold. So he picked up a Monkey Ward catalogue and ordered a big white
+enamel number large enough for a hotel. Joe thought a refrigerator was
+just a refrigerator and he strutted around telling everybody. He had to
+widen the dugout door and waiting customers were more than eager to help
+him get the machine in place. He loaded the shelves and told them to
+come back in a couple of hours and cool their innards.
+
+They came with their tongues hanging out. Joe set out the glasses and
+passed the bottles. Herman Jones picked one up and shook it. The cork
+hit the ceiling. "Hotter'n hell," Herman said. "What sort of cooler is
+that?" He went over and looked. "Gas. You dam' fool. Nearest gas is
+Barstow."
+
+Until Joe's death he used the refrigerator to store pots and pans.
+
+Discovered in his dugout in a serious condition, Joe was rushed to Death
+Valley Junction 28 miles away, where the Pacific Coast Borax Company
+maintained a hospital which was in charge of Dr. Shrum, who was rather
+realistic and somewhat cold blooded.
+
+Just as they had gotten Joe in the doctor's office, another patient was
+brought in. Dr. Shrum looked at the new comer and then at Joe. "Take Joe
+out," he ordered. "He's going to die anyway."
+
+Joe was wheeled outside and a moment later was dead.
+
+
+George Williams, a Spanish American war veteran, retired to Shoshone on
+a pension of $50. Since food was cheap, George had more money than he
+knew what to do with. He kept five burros. He never prospected, but
+roamed the country and thought nothing of taking a 300 mile trip across
+the roughest terrain in the region. After spending his summers in the
+high country, he would return to Shoshone in winter. There he had a five
+acre ranch fenced in and a neat cabin.
+
+Every day George would come to the store and buy a pound of chocolates.
+"I've got a sweet tooth," he would explain.
+
+Charlie, sure that no one could eat as much chocolate as George bought,
+was a bit curious as to what George did with it and trailed him one day
+through the mesquite to find George feeding the candy to his burros.
+
+George was not a drinker, but on one occasion he joined a party and went
+on a bender. He awoke next morning with a horrible hangover and was so
+humiliated that he left Shoshone and never returned. He went over to
+Sandy and died in the '30s.
+
+One day George started to tell me a story as we sat on the bench. His
+burros were grazing in the nearby salt grass. Every time he reached the
+climax of his yarn, he would jump up to go after a straying burro. When
+he retrieved that one, another would wander off and George would leave
+me again.
+
+For one entire summer I listened to the beginning of that yarn and every
+morning would remind him of it.
+
+"Where was I?" he'd say. "Oh, yes, I was telling you about the girl
+climbing out of the fellow's window just before daylight. Well, she
+went--"
+
+Then George would jump up and start for a burro, and I never learned
+what happened to the torrid romance after the girl crawled out of her
+lover's window.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XXI
+                        Roads. Cracker Box Signs
+
+
+Any resemblance that a Death Valley highway bore to a road was a
+coincidence prior to 1926, and few tourists traveled over them unless
+two cars were along. "Just follow the wheel tracks and keep your eyes
+peeled for the cracker box signs along the road," was the usual advice
+to the novice who didn't know that tracks left by Mormons' wagons nearly
+a century before may be seen today.
+
+One of these led me to the bank of a mile-wide gash made by cloudbursts.
+To locate the missing link I climbed the nearest mountain and on a
+lonely mesa came at last upon a piece of shook nailed to a stake and
+stuck into the ground. But it had nothing to do with roads. A crude
+inscription read:
+
+
+    Montana Jim
+    July 1888
+    A dam good pal
+
+
+Reverently I stepped aside. Never again would I see a finer tribute to
+man. A few rocks bleached white in the sun outlined a sunken grave.
+Crossed upon it were Jim's pick and shovel. It was not difficult to
+recreate what had happened there. Jim and his friend looking for gold.
+Jim's faltering and the sun beating him down. Jim's partner knowing that
+Jim's moniker would identify him better than a surname to anyone who
+passed that way interested in Jim. Out in the desert 100 miles from
+human habitation he couldn't call an undertaker, so he dug a hole,
+wrapped Jim in his canvas, rolled him in and hoped that God would reach
+down for Jim.
+
+At that period it was not an uncommon experience for the early tourist
+to lose his way by doing the natural thing at a crossroads and take the
+one which showed the sign of most travel. Often he would find later that
+he had followed a trail to a mine miles away. Often too, it led to
+disaster.
+
+
+The story of roads begins at Shoshone with Brown. In his trips in and
+around the valley, he erected signs to prevent the traveler from losing
+his way and his life. "I would like to see Death Valley country," people
+would say to him, "but everyone tells me to stay out."
+
+Inyo county had little revenue and that was used in the more populous
+Owens Valley 150 miles west. The east side (the Shoshone area) was
+totally neglected. Letters and petitions protesting the unfair
+distribution of county funds were tossed into the waste basket. "Roads
+in that cauldron? Who would use 'em? Nobody ever goes there but a few
+old prospectors."
+
+This was true but it was also true that on Owens Valley's west side the
+lakes and forests of the High Sierras were attracting a paying crop of
+vacationists and the supervisors knew it would be political suicide to
+divert this traffic from its towns and resorts. The county-wide opinion
+as to chance for relief was expressed in the slang of the day by a
+loafer on the bench at Shoshone: "About as much as a wax mouse would
+have against an asbestos cat in a race through hell. They have the votes
+and elect the supervisors."
+
+The east side had never had a member on the board. In the Shoshone
+precinct were less than 40 voters. In Death Valley a few prospectors who
+would have battered down the gates of hell if they thought gold lay
+beyond, poked around in its canyons. A few Indians. A few workmen for
+the Borax Company. In 1924 Brown put his suitcase in his car, filled the
+tank and said to those about: "Fellows, I'm running for Supervisor."
+"You'll be the mouse," quipped a friend.
+
+"I'll let 'em know somebody lives over here anyway...."
+
+Skirting the urban strongholds of the gentlemen in office Brown knocked
+at every door in the district. He berated none nor claimed he had all
+the answers to an obviously difficult problem. "... Roads built there
+will lead here. Everybody will gain...." Then to the next cabin and the
+next canyon until he'd seen every voter.
+
+Before the opposition knew he had been around, he was back in Shoshone
+selling bacon and beans.
+
+When the votes were counted the overlords of the west side gasped. "Who
+the hell's this Brown? Didn't even know he was running...."
+
+Taking office January 1, 1925, he found that the beaten incumbent had
+spent all the money allocated for road maintenance in his own bailiwick
+before retiring. Nevertheless, Brown convinced the new board his
+election proved that the people of the entire county agreed with him
+that the Death Valley area could no longer be neglected and managed to
+get a niggardly appropriation which would not have built a mile of
+decent mountain road, and his district had three challenging mountain
+ranges to cross.
+
+With this appropriation he was expected to care for a mileage four times
+greater than that of the west side and was thus responsible for not only
+eastern approaches but maintenance of 150 miles of road from Darwin, all
+roads in the valley and those which furnished the north and south
+approaches. He managed to get $5000 after two years. With this he
+procured road machinery on a rental basis and succeeded in making a fair
+desert road. Then he began a one-man crusade to exploit Death Valley as
+a tourist attraction. "We need only roads a tourist can travel."
+
+He worked just as diligently for all of Inyo's roads. "We have one of
+the world's best vacation lands," he told the west-siders. "You have an
+abundance of beautiful lakes and streams in a setting of mountains
+impressive as any in the world. On our side we offer the appeal of the
+Panamint, the Funeral Range, and spectacular Death Valley. Tourists will
+come to both of us if we give them a chance and they will be our best
+crop."
+
+By 1926 his crusade for roads had spread beyond Inyo county lines. San
+Bernardino county, through which passes Highway 66, a main
+transcontinental artery, joins Inyo on the south. Its board of
+supervisors was in session one day when Brown strode in. Most of them he
+knew. He wanted their advice, he told them. "Your county and mine need
+more roads to bring more people. The easiest way into Death Valley is
+through your county from Baker. The distance from Baker to the Inyo
+county line is 45 miles. If you will build the road to the Inyo line, I
+will build it from that point to Furnace Creek, 71 miles. Such a road
+would open Death Valley to the public and the tourists who will travel
+will spend enough money in your towns to pay your share of the cost."
+
+San Bernardino supervisors agreed to consider it but were not
+enthusiastic. One of America's largest counties, San Bernardino had also
+one of its largest road problems.
+
+Brown kept plugging, arranging meetings, convincing residents that the
+county's portion of the road would be over flat country and over roads
+already passable, and its construction inexpensive.
+
+Finally San Bernardino county supervisors agreed and by April, 1929, he
+had 71 miles of passable road. The result was that Death Valley was no
+longer remote as the Congo and tourists began to come.
+
+To Shoshone it meant a few more windshields to wipe; a few more cars to
+crawl under. Another soft answer to frame for the sightseer cursing the
+desolation. Another shed for the store that started on the kitchen
+table.
+
+In 1932 Brown went before the State Highway Commission and urged that
+all the roads he had built in Death Valley be taken over by the state.
+The law was passed.
+
+Death Valley became a National Monument February 11, 1933, by order of
+President Franklin Roosevelt. At that time America was groping its way
+through depression, worrying about its dinner and its debts as a result
+of the stock market crash of 1929.
+
+In the nation's hobo jungles the seasoned "bindle stiff" made room for
+the newcomer who had always lived on the right side of the tracks.
+Freight trains carried a new kind of bum when the adolescent female
+crawled into a car alongside an adolescent male, vainly seeking work
+anywhere at anything.
+
+To save them and others like them C.C.C. camps were organized and one of
+these recruited largely from New York City's Bowery, was sent to Death
+Valley with headquarters at Cow Creek, a few miles north of Furnace
+Creek Inn.
+
+The new park was under the supervision of Col. John R. White, later
+superintendent of the entire National Park System and to Ray Goodwin,
+assistant superintendent was assigned the task of building additional
+roads and trails to points of interest to connect with the State System
+which Brown had built.
+
+Then began in earnest the flow of tourist traffic to the "God-forsaken
+hole" for which Brown had worked for 14 long and difficult years. But he
+soon found that to the problems of a small desert community he had added
+those of a whole county. They were the aftermath of what has since been
+called in a marvelous understatement by Morrow Mayo, historian of Los
+Angeles, "The Rape of Owens Valley."
+
+In the early part of the century, the city of Los Angeles had secretly
+acquired nearly all sources of water in Inyo and Mono counties. An
+amazed world applauded the engineering feat by which water was siphoned
+over mountain ranges to flow through ditches and tunnels, a distance of
+259 miles.
+
+The enterprise was announced by its promoters as the answer to the
+desperate need for water. It is now known that this need was only a mask
+to hide a scheme to make Los Angeles pay the cost of bringing water to
+108,000 acres of waterless land in San Fernando valley so that the
+owners could make a profit of a hundred million dollars through its
+subdivision and sale. This they did.
+
+The shameful story glorifies by comparison the cattle wars of the early
+West when one side hired its Billy the Kids to kill off the other--the
+only difference being that in the Owens Valley feud the Billy the Kids
+were the Big Names of Los Angeles who used unscrupulous politicians and
+laws cunningly passed instead of six-guns.
+
+As a consequence, Los Angeles owns the towns, ranches, and cattle ranges
+so that merchants, householders, ranchers, and renters have no title
+except in a relatively few instances, to the land upon which they live
+or to the house or store they occupy. Los Angeles could sell or lease or
+refuse to sell or lease land to cattlemen, homes to residents or stores
+to merchants and sell or refuse to sell water to those who had lived all
+their lives and would die on the devastated land.
+
+As a result, the relations between the city and the Displaced Persons of
+the two counties were those of victor and vanquished.
+
+In 1935 the city succeeded in getting an act passed by the legislature
+which prevented any town from becoming incorporated without the consent
+of 60 per cent of the property owners. The purpose of the act seemed
+fair enough when it was announced that it was designed to save the towns
+from both political demagogues and crackpots running amuck in California
+and it became a law.
+
+But there was more than the eye could see. Its real object had been to
+strengthen the strangle hold of the Los Angeles Water and Power board
+upon Owens Valley. Since it owned the towns it could now prevent their
+incorporation. There had been some feeling of security under a
+resolution of the Water and Power Board which had declared that
+merchants, cattlemen, and residents--all of them lessees, would be given
+preference in new leases and renewals of old ones.
+
+In 1942 the resolution became a scrap of paper, and ranchers, cattle men
+and householders were advised that their leases would hereafter be
+renewed by a method of secret bidding.
+
+Thus the residents of Owens Valley learned that the labor of years had
+brought no security. As one beaten old timer told me, "We've been kicked
+around so much I'm used to it. I helped blow those ditches two-three
+times, to turn that water loose on the desert. I know when I'm licked."
+
+Resentment in Mono county, which provided more of the water taken by Los
+Angeles than Inyo, was even more aroused and smoldering hatreds were
+ready again to blow up a ditch. The two counties constitute the 28th
+Senatorial district.
+
+Brown's success in the Assembly had not gone unnoticed in the
+neighboring county of Mono. "We need that fellow Brown," a prominent
+citizen said, and others repeated it.
+
+Again Charlie put his suitcase in his car, filled the tank. "We've never
+had anybody from this side at Sacramento," he told a friend standing by.
+"I'm running for the Senate."
+
+"Know anybody up there?"
+
+"I'm going and get acquainted," he said and headed across the valley.
+
+Most of Mono county is isolated by the High Sierras. Again the door to
+door technique. No torches. No brass bands. Just the old
+eye-to-eye-talk-it-over system. As always he let the voter do the
+talking and he listened, but when he slid into his car the voter was
+ready to tell his neighbor: "I like that fellow. Doesn't claim to know
+it all." He told his banker, his grocer, his butcher, baker, and barber.
+
+Result? I was in the Senate Chamber at Sacramento later, when I heard
+one of a group of men huddled nearby say, "This is an important bill
+that concerns everybody on the east side of the Sierras. We'd better see
+Charlie." I nudged the man reading a document at my side. "Those fellows
+want to see you, Senator."
+
+He had received the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican
+parties and had secured the passage of an act which denies a
+municipality holding more than 50 per cent of the property of another
+subdivision of the state, proprietary power over the security and
+stability of such subdivision. Moreover he was on the all-powerful Rules
+Committee, the Fish and Game, Local Government, Natural Resources,
+Social Welfare, and Election Committees, friend and frequent adviser of
+Governor Warren.
+
+Honeymooning Secretary Ickes was combining business with pleasure when
+he reached California and wanting to see how his Park System was
+functioning, he took his bride to see Death Valley. Besides, he had some
+plans affecting the Inyo area.
+
+The fight was having tough sledding in the legislature despite President
+Roosevelt's approval. Then he talked to people less biased. "You'd
+better see Charlie...."
+
+"Who the hell's Charlie?" asked Harold.
+
+"Senator from Death Valley...."
+
+With Ray Goodwin, Superintendent of the Death Valley Monument to guide
+him, he was taken to all the show places. "Now," said Mr. Ickes, "I want
+to see Brown."
+
+At Shoshone Charlie's toggery is strictly for work which includes
+tending the gas pump, stove repairing, plumbing, and what-have-you. He
+was flat on his back under the dripping oil of a balky car when Mr.
+Goodwin stepped from the limousine.
+
+"Charlie," Mr. Goodwin called, "Mr. Ickes is here to see you." Receiving
+no answer, he walked over to the car and added that Mr. Ickes was in a
+hurry. Still, no answer. "It's Secretary Ickes, Department of the
+Interior. This is important."
+
+"So's this," Brown grunted. When he'd finished, he crawled out and
+wiping the grime from his hands, joined Goodwin at the waiting car.
+After being introduced to the bride and the self-styled "Old Curmudgeon"
+the latter explained his plan to add certain lands in Charlie's
+district, to the Forest Reserve. "... You're opposing me. You're a
+Democrat, aren't you?"
+
+"I came from Georgia," Charlie drawled.
+
+"You're for Roosevelt, aren't you?"
+
+"Within reason," Charlie answered.
+
+Then Mr. Ickes, with the assurance of the perfectionist began to sell
+his idea.
+
+"Do you know of any reason why the area designated as Forest Reserve
+should not be protected as any other of our natural resources?" he
+concluded.
+
+"Just one," Charlie said.
+
+"What's that?" Ickes snapped.
+
+"Your forest is nearly all brush land without a tree on it big enough to
+shade a lizard."
+
+Charlie was similarly dressed when a well tailored and impatient tourist
+with a carload of friends whom he was evidently trying to impress, drove
+up for gas.
+
+Always unhurried, Charlie came to the pumps, slowly reached for the hose
+and as lazily checked the oil.
+
+"Say, fellow--" the tourist barked. "Senator Brown is a friend of mine.
+Get a move on or you'll be looking for a job."
+
+Without the flicker of an eyelid, Charlie quickened, jumped for a
+cleaning rag and briskly polished the windshield. When he brought the
+tourist's change he apologized for his slowness and begged him not to
+report it to Senator Brown. "Jobs are hard to get and I have a wife and
+ten children to support."
+
+Touched with remorse, the tourist looked at the change. "Just give it to
+the kids and forget it."
+
+When the Pacific Coast Borax Company built its swanky Furnace Creek Inn
+on the western slope of the Funeral Range overlooking Death Valley, it
+began to look about for places that would give the most spectacular and
+comprehensive view of the Big Sink as a means of entertaining guests,
+and far enough away to keep them from boredom.
+
+All the old timers who had wandered over the ranges were called in. Each
+suggested the place that had impressed him more than others. Each of
+these places was visited and after weeks of deliberation a spot on
+Chloride Cliff toward the northern end of Death Valley was chosen and
+the bigwigs started back to Los Angeles.
+
+When they stopped at Shoshone for gas and water, Clarence Rasor, an
+engineer of the company was still thinking of the chosen site and asked
+Brown, long his friend, if he knew of any view of the valley better than
+the one at Chloride Cliff.
+
+"I don't pay much attention to scenery," he told Rasor. "To me it's all
+just desert or mountain. But I know one view that made me stop and look.
+Kinda got me. The chances are most folks would rave over it."
+
+"Could you find it?"
+
+"Sure could...."
+
+Rasor called the others, repeated Charlie's story and added: "You're in
+a hurry, but knowing Charlie as I do, I believe we'd better turn around
+and go back if he'll guide us."
+
+Charlie agreed. It was a long, tortuous climb, even to the base of the
+peak. There Charlie went ahead and then beckoned them. Holding to bushes
+they walked or crawled to stand beside him; took one look and caught
+their breath. A mile below them lay the awesome Sink. White salt beds
+spread like a shroud over its silent desolation. Billowed dunes, gold
+against the dark of lava rock. Here a pastelled hill. There a brooding
+canyon. Beyond, the colorful Panamint under the golden glow of the sun.
+
+"This is the place," they said.
+
+"... You can tell 'em too," said Charlie pointing, "that right down
+there is Copper Canyon. If such stuff interests them, they can see the
+footprints of the camels and elephants and a lot of historic junk like
+that."
+
+So you who thrill at Dante's View may thank Charles Brown of Shoshone.
+
+When first elected to the senate, his colleagues were quick to see the
+qualities that had appealed to voters when they elected him supervisor.
+He had frequently been before that body in his fight for roads and tax
+reforms. They knew too that better schools for all rural areas either
+wholly or largely were the result of his efforts, and soon he was on the
+Rules Committee--a place usually assigned to those who come from the
+more populous districts of the state, because its five members through
+its power to appoint all standing and special committees, largely decide
+what legislation reaches the governor.
+
+In 1950 Brown announced his candidacy for reelection under the state law
+that enables a candidate to seek the nomination of two parties.
+
+The slot machine had been outlawed in California by the previous
+legislature and Brown had been largely instrumental in securing the
+passage of the law. Since the slot machine is a three billion dollar
+business in the nation, the gamblers opposed him as part of a general
+plan to secure repeal of the law and reinstate the one-arm bandits.
+
+Since Mono county adjoins Nevada, gambling interests of that state
+contributed without stint, to retire Brown to private life. He had been
+in office for 25 years and opposed by this powerful group, guided by
+both brains and cunning, the odds apparently were against him. While the
+opposition boasted that he was through, Brown was calling at cabins in
+the hills and gulches, meeting friends on busy village streets and again
+when the vote was counted, it was discovered that voters have memories.
+He had won the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican parties
+by almost two to one and under the law, was re-elected.
+
+Due to his priority standing and the retirement of older senators, the
+big fellow who walked 150 miles to get a job at Greenwater in order to
+save the fare to eat on, automatically shares with two men the power to
+control the legislation of the state.
+
+
+Hell, like gold, is where you find it--either in people or places. A
+lady of wealth and aristocratic background in route to Furnace Creek's
+luxury inn, stopped at Shoshone for gas. Worn out by the long drive over
+the corduroy road, she looked about her and then at Charlie in greasy
+overalls. "How on earth," she asked in genuine distress, "do you make a
+living in this God-forsaken-hole?"
+
+"It's hard ma'am," Charlie said gloomily. "But we get a few pennies from
+tourists, a little flour from mesquite beans, and stay alive one way or
+another, hoping to get out."
+
+The gracious lady opened her purse, thrust a five dollar bill into
+Charlie's hand and went her way.
+
+"It really made her happy," Charlie chuckled, "and I just didn't have
+the heart to give it back."
+
+What is it that man wants of these "God-forsaken-holes" on the desert? I
+sought the answer one day when Shoshone was having a holiday. George
+Ishmael, as native as an Indian, was chosen to barbecue the steer. A
+well-to-do tourist begged the job of digging the big pit. "Want to flex
+my muscles...." Another cut the wood. At a depth of four feet, water was
+struck and rose a foot over the bottom. "That's all right" George said.
+He tossed a dozen railroad ties into the hole, floated them into
+position, covered them with dirt, built the fire, lowered the carcass of
+the steer, covered it with green leaves and filled the hole. "An
+unforgettable feast," agreed the scores who had come from places 100
+miles away.
+
+Sitting beside me was a prominent Los Angeles attorney, eminent in the
+councils of the Democratic party in both state and nation. "Why," he
+asked, "will a man wear himself out in the city when he can really live
+in a little place like this?"
+
+"I thought of suicide at first," said Patsy, young matron with three
+healthy little stairsteps. "My husband said 'for heaven's sake, go out
+for a month and have a good time.' I went. Back in a week."
+
+A Vermont girl said she had come to escape a straightlaced code that
+constantly reminded her sin was everywhere. "Here I've got an even break
+with the devil...."
+
+All had found something that clicked with something inside of them which
+challenged something in civilization. Maybe it was expressed in the
+dogma of the Tennessee judge reared in the hill country of the
+Cumberland river. As he stepped from his plane on his annual vacation he
+was cornered by a reporter: "Judge, you're 94 years old. What do you
+think of this modern world?"
+
+"Best one I know about."
+
+"No criticism?"
+
+"None whatever. Maybe a few minor changes. Just now we are being
+educated out of common sense into ignorance; lawed out of patriotism;
+taxed into poverty; doctored to death and preached to hell...."
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XXII
+                  Lost Mines. The Breyfogle and Others
+
+
+The most famous lost mine in the Death Valley area is the Lost
+Breyfogle. There are many versions of the legend, but all agree that
+somewhere in the bowels of those rugged mountains is a colossal mass of
+gold, which Jacob Breyfogle found and lost.
+
+Jacob Breyfogle was a prospector who roamed the country around Pioche
+and Austin, Nevada, with infrequent excursions into the Death valley
+area. He traveled alone.
+
+Indian George, Hungry Bill, and Panamint Tom saw Breyfogle several times
+in the country around Stovepipe Wells, but they could never trace him to
+his claim. When followed, George said, Breyfogle would step off the
+trail and completely disappear. Once George told me about trailing him
+into the Funeral Range. He pointed to the bare mountain. "Him there, me
+see. Pretty quick--" He paused, puckered his lips. "Whoop--no see."
+
+Breyfogle left a crude map of his course. All lost mines must have a
+map. Conspicuous on this map are the Death Valley Buttes which are
+landmarks. Because he was seen so much here, it was assumed that his
+operations were in the low foothills. I have seen a rough copy of this
+map made from the original in possession of "Wildrose" Frank Kennedy's
+squaw, Lizzie.
+
+Breyfogle presumably coming from his mine, was accosted near Stovepipe
+Wells by Panamint Tom, Hungry Bill, and a young buck related to them,
+known as Johnny. Hungry Bill, from habit, begged for food. Breyfogle
+refused, explaining that he had but a morsel and several hard days'
+journey before him. On his burro he had a small sack of ore. When
+Breyfogle left, Hungry Bill said, "Him no good."
+
+Incited by Hungry Bill and possible loot, the Indians followed Breyfogle
+for three or four days across the range. Hungry Bill stopped en route,
+sent the younger Indians ahead. At Stump Springs east of Shoshone,
+Breyfogle was eating his dinner when the Indians sneaked out of the
+brush and scalped him, took what they wished of his possessions and left
+him for dead.
+
+Ash Meadows Charlie, a chief of the Indians in that area confided to
+Herman Jones that he had witnessed this assault. This happened on the
+Yundt Ranch, or as it is better known, the Manse Ranch. Yundt and Aaron
+Winters accidentally came upon Breyfogle unconscious on the ground. The
+scalp wound was fly-blown. They had a mule team and light wagon and
+hurried to San Bernardino with the wounded man. The ore, a chocolate
+quartz, was thrown into the wagon.
+
+"I saw some of it at Phi Lee's home, the Resting Spring Ranch," Shorty
+Harris said. "It was the richest ore I ever saw. Fifty pounds yielded
+nearly $6000."
+
+Breyfogle recovered, but thereafter was regarded as slightly "off." He
+returned to Austin, Nevada, and the story followed.
+
+Wildrose (Frank) Kennedy, an experienced mining man obtained a copy of
+Breyfogle's map and combed the country around the buttes in an effort to
+locate the mine. Kennedy had the aid of the Indians and was able to
+obtain, through his squaw Lizzie, such information as Indians had about
+the going and coming of the elusive Breyfogle.
+
+"Some believe the ore came from around Daylight Springs," Shorty said,
+"but old Lizzie's map had no mark to indicate Daylight Springs. But it
+does show the buttes and the only buttes in Death Valley are those above
+Stovepipe Wells.
+
+"Kennedy interested Henry E. Findley, an old time Colorado sheriff and
+Clarence Nyman, for years a prospector for Coleman and Smith (the
+Pacific Borax Company). They induced Mat Cullen, a rich Salt Lake mining
+man, to leave his business and come out. They made three trips into the
+valley, looking for that gold. It's there somewhere."
+
+At Austin, Breyfogle was outfitted several times to relocate the
+property, but when he reached the lower elevation of the valley, he
+seemed to suffer some aberration which would end the trip. His last
+grubstaker was not so considerate. He told Breyfogle that if he didn't
+find the mine promptly he'd make a sieve of him and was about to do it
+when a companion named Atchison intervened and saved his life. Shortly
+afterward, Breyfogle died from the old wound.
+
+Indian George, repeating a story told him by Panamint Tom, once told me
+that Tom had traced Breyfogle to the mine and after Breyfogle's death
+went back and secured some of the ore. Tom guarded his secret. He
+covered the opening with stone and leaving, walked backwards,
+obliterating his tracks with a greasewood brush. Later when Tom returned
+prepared to get the gold he found that a cloudburst had filled the
+canyon with boulders, gravel and silt, removing every landmark and
+Breyfogle's mine was lost again.
+
+"Some day maybe," George said, "big rain come and wash um out."
+
+Among the freighters of the early days was John Delameter who believed
+the Breyfogle was in the lower Panamint. Delameter operated a 20 mule
+team freighting service between Daggett and points in both Death Valley
+and Panamint Valley. He told me that he found Breyfogle down in the road
+about twenty-eight miles south of Ballarat with a wound in his leg.
+Breyfogle had come into the Panamint from Pioche, Nevada, and said he
+had been attacked by Indians, his horses stolen, while working on his
+claim which he located merely with a gesture toward the mountains.
+
+Subsequently Delameter made several vain efforts to locate the property,
+but like most lost mines it continues to be lost. But for years it was
+good bait for a grubstake and served both the convincing liar and the
+honest prospector.
+
+Nearly all old timers had a version of the Lost Breyfogle differing in
+details but all agreeing on the chocolate quartz and its richness.
+
+That Breyfogle really lost a valuable mine there can be little doubt,
+but since he is authentically traced from the northern end of Death
+Valley to the southern, and since the chocolate quartz is found in many
+places of that area, one who cares to look for it must cover a large
+territory.
+
+
+One mine that had never been found turned up in a way as amazing as most
+of them are lost.
+
+At Pioche, Nevada, an assayer was suspected of giving greater values to
+samples than they merited. It is known as the "come on."
+
+In order to trap the suspect, a prospector broke off a piece of old
+grindstone and ordered an assay. "If he gives that any value, it's proof
+enough he's a crook," he told his friends.
+
+Proof of guilt came with the assayer's report. The grindstone was
+incredibly rich in silver, it said.
+
+"We've got the goods on him now," the outraged prospector announced and
+it was decided to give the assayer a coat of tar and feathers. Wiser
+counsel was accepted, however, and it was decided to give him no more
+business. The fellow was faced with the alternative of starving or
+leaving the country, when he learned the reason of the boycott.
+Conscious of no error in his work, he made another and more careful
+assay. This time the samples yielded even higher values.
+
+It was agreed by all mining engineers of that day that rock like the
+samples never carried silver or gold. But the assayer knew his furnace
+hadn't lied and he couldn't believe grindstone makers were mixing silver
+with sand to make the stones. So he traced the grindstone to the quarry
+it came from. The result was the Silver King, one of the richest silver
+mines.
+
+
+THE LOST GUNSIGHT. The first lost mine in Death Valley, preceding that
+of Breyfogle's by four or five years, was the Gunsight.
+
+A survivor of the Jayhawkers or the Bennett-Arcane party of '49 (it is
+not clear to which he belonged) after escaping death in the valley, saw
+a deer or antelope and on the point of starvation, took his gun from its
+strap to shoot the animal. Seeing that the sight had been lost, he
+picked up a thin piece of shale and wedged it in the sight slot. Later
+he took the weapon to a gunsmith who removed the makeshift sight and
+upon examination found it to be almost pure silver. "Where I picked it
+up," said the owner, "there was a mountain of it."
+
+So begins the history of the Lost Gunsight and the story spread as
+stories will, until ten years later it reached the ears of Dr. Darwin
+French of Oroville, previously mentioned. The doctor became excited and
+in the spring of 1860 organized a party to locate the fabulous mountain
+of silver. Though he searched bravely he failed to find it. However, he
+brought back the first authentic account of what others with a flair for
+lost mines could expect in the way of weather, topography, Indians,
+edible game, vegetation, and water. On this trip, however, he discovered
+silver in the Coso Range.
+
+The following year, 1861, Dr. S. G. George who had been with the French
+party, decided he could find the Lost Gunsight and organized an
+expedition which crossed Panamint Valley, explored Wild Rose Canyon and
+reached the highest spot in Death Valley. But Dr. George's valiant
+efforts were no luckier than those of Dr. French.
+
+William Manly, author of "Death Valley in Forty-Nine" also tried but
+gained only another tragic experience and came nearer losing his life
+than he did with the Forty-Niners. Lost and without water and beaten to
+his knees, he was deserted by companions and escaped death by a miracle.
+How many have lost their lives trying to find the Gunsight no one knows.
+There are scores of sunken mounds on lonely mesas which an old timer
+will explain tersely: "He was looking for the Gunsight."
+
+Dr. French, after his failure, pursued another and even more intriguing
+lost mine. With a ready ear for tales of treasure, he heard of a tribe
+of Indians in the Death Valley area who were making bullets for their
+rifles out of gold. Accordingly he organized another party to find the
+gold.
+
+For eleven months Dr. French and his hand-picked comrades combed the
+country. The gold they found would have loaded no gun, but you may add
+the Lost Bullet to your list of lost mines. A member of this party was
+John Searles, for whom Searles' Lake is named.
+
+Because early prospectors searched for Breyfogle's lost mine throughout
+the region where he was found scalped, an interesting digression is not
+amiss.
+
+A few miles east of Shoshone, there is a Gunsight mine named, of course,
+by the discoverer in the hope that he'd found the one so long lost. It
+adjoins the Noonday and was a valuable property which belonged to Dr. L.
+D. Godshall of Victorville.
+
+The Noonday produced five million dollars and was operated until silver
+and lead took a price dive. A 12 mile railroad was built from Tecopa to
+haul the ore. The steel rails were later hauled away and the ties went
+into construction of desert homes, sheds, fences, and firewood. For
+years the two properties could have been bought for what-have-you.
+
+Then came Pearl Harbor and a young Kentuckian, Buford Davis, looking
+around for lead or any essential ores that Uncle Sam could use, dropped
+off at Shoshone. Charles Brown told him of the Gunsight and the Noonday.
+Davis inspected the properties, bought them for a relatively small down
+payment. He chose to begin operations on the Noonday and sent Ernie
+Huhn, an experienced miner to deepen the shaft.
+
+"Honest to God," Ernie told me, "I hadn't dug a foot when I turned up
+the prettiest vein of lead I'd ever seen."
+
+In the next six years the Noonday produced approximately a gross of nine
+million dollars and a net of probably six million dollars.
+
+These figures were given me by Don Kempfer, mining engineer and Shoshone
+resident, from estimates which he believed accurate.
+
+In 1947 with the rich rewards attained but as yet unenjoyed, Buford
+Davis made a hurried airplane trip to Salt Lake. Returning, he was only
+a few moments from a safe landing when the plane crashed and all aboard
+were killed.
+
+Today, (1950) the property belongs to Anaconda and is considered one of
+its most valuable mines.
+
+For those interested in lost mines I offer the list that follows. (The
+names are my own.)
+
+
+THE LOST CHINAMAN: When John Searles was struggling to make a living out
+of the ooze that is called Searles' Lake he had a mule skinner known as
+Salty Bill Parkinson--a fearless, hard-bitten individual who was the
+Paul Bunyan of Death Valley teamsters.
+
+While loading a wagon with borax, Salty Bill and Searles noticed a man
+staggering down from the Slate Range. They decided he was supercharged
+with desert likker and paid scant attention as he wobbled across the
+flat from the base of the range. A moment later he fell at their feet.
+They saw then that he was a Chinaman; that his tongue was swollen, his
+eyes red and sunken; that he clutched at his throat in a vain effort to
+speak. He could make no intelligible sound and lapsed into
+unconsciousness. They thought he had died and was left on their hands
+for burial.
+
+Salty Bill afterwards stated that he'd said to Searles: "'Fremont,
+Carson, or the Mormons old Bill Williams, for whom Bill Williams River,
+Bill Williams Mountain, and the town of Williams, Arizona, are named was
+at Resting Springs. He'll spoil in an hour. I'll go for a shovel while
+you choose a place to plant him.' I'd actually turned to go when Searles
+called me back." Searles had seen some sign of life and after removing a
+canvas bag strapped to his body they took him to a nearby shed, gave him
+a few spoonfuls of water and eventually he was restored to
+consciousness. He lay in a semi-stupor all the afternoon and was
+obsessed with the idea that he was going to die. His chief concern was
+to get to Mojave so that he could take a stage for a seaport and die in
+China or failing, arrange for the burial of his bones with those of his
+ancestors.
+
+He had been working at Old Harmony Borax Works, picking cotton-ball
+borax with other Chinese employed by the company, but tiring of abuse by
+a tough boss, he'd asked for his wages and walked out. Some Piutes told
+him of a short cut across the Panamint and this he took.
+
+En route he picked up a piece of rich float, stuck it into his bag.
+Farther on his journey he ran out of water and became hopelessly lost.
+He managed to reach the Slate Range, however, and from the summit saw
+Searles' Lake. Though in no condition to stand the rough trip to Mojave
+he begged to be sent there and yielding finally, Salty Bill, ready to
+leave with his load, threw the Chinaman on his wagon and started on his
+trip.
+
+Before reaching Mojave, the Chinaman's condition became worse and Salty
+Bill stopped the team in answer to his yells. The canvas sack lay
+alongside the stricken Chinaman and reaching for it, he brought out a
+lump of ore.
+
+"Never in my life," said Salty Bill, "have I seen ore like that."
+
+The Chinaman gave the ore to Salty, thanked him for his friendly
+treatment, told him that at a place in the Panamint where "the Big
+Timber pitches down into a steep canyon," he had found the float. Again
+he expressed his belief that he was going to die and exacted a promise
+from Salty that if death came before reaching Mojave, Salty would see
+that his remains be shipped to China, adding that any Chinaman in Mojave
+would provide money if needed. "You find the gold and keep it," he told
+Salty. "For me--no good. No can...."
+
+The journey was completed and Salty learned that the Chinaman did die at
+Mojave and that a countryman there saw that the remains were sent to the
+Flowery Kingdom.
+
+Salty Bill showed the ore to John Searles and Searles, usually
+indifferent to yarns of hidden ledges, was even more excited than Salty.
+For four or five years the two men made trips in search of the place
+where Big Timber pitches into a canyon. After these, other tireless
+prospectors sought the elusive ledge but the Lost Chinaman is still
+lost.
+
+
+THE LOST WAGON. Jim Hurley went to Parker, Arizona. Broke, he wanted
+quick money and was looking for placer. The storekeeper was a friend of
+Jim and had previously staked him.
+
+"I'm looking for a place to wash out some gold, but I've no money and no
+grub...."
+
+Jim was told of a butte on the Colorado Desert. "It's good placer ground
+and you ought to pan a few dollars without much trouble...." He provided
+Jim with bacon and beans and feed for his burros.
+
+Jim set out, found the butte, but no gold and decided to try a new
+location. On the way out he saw behind some bushes an old wagon that
+seemed to be half buried in blow sand. Thinking it would be a good
+feeding place for his burros, he went over. On the ground nearby he saw
+the bleached skeleton of a man. He threw aside a half-rotted tarpaulin
+in the wagon bed and discovered fifteen sacks of ore.
+
+It was obvious that the wagon had stood there for a long time. He
+examined the ore and saw that it was rich and of a peculiar color. He
+loaded the ore on his burros, returned to Parker and sent it to the
+smelter. He received in return, $1800. Losing no time, Jim returned to
+find the source of the ore and though for the next five years he looked
+at intervals for a quartz to match that found in the wagon, he could
+find nothing that even resembled it. Where it came from no prospector on
+the desert would even venture an opinion, but all declared they had seen
+no quartz of that peculiar color and all of them knew the country from
+Mexico to Nevada.
+
+But Jim added to his store an adventure and a memory and there is no
+treasure in this life richer than a memory.
+
+
+THE LOST GOLLER. This, I believe, is a lost mine that really exists and
+though the location has been prospected from the days of Dr. Darwin
+French in 1860, none have looked for it except the one who lost it in
+1850. He was John Goller, who came to California with the Jayhawkers.
+
+Goller was a blacksmith and wagon maker and was the first American to
+establish such a business in the pueblo of Los Angeles. After convincing
+the native Californian that his spoke-wheel wagon would function as
+effectively as the rounded slabs of wood, the only vehicles then used,
+he made a comfortable fortune and no one in the pueblo had a reputation
+for better character.
+
+Crossing the Panamint, Goller, though strong and husky, became separated
+from his companions and barely escaped with his life. Coming down a
+Panamint canyon he found some gold nuggets and filled his pockets with
+them. After crossing Panamint Valley and the Slate Range, he was found
+by Mexican vaqueros of Don Ignacio del Valle, owner of the great Camulos
+Rancho. After his recovery he proceeded to Los Angeles. In showing the
+nuggets to friends he said, "I could have filled a wagon with them."
+
+Goller, because of his means was soon able to take vacations which were
+devoted to looking for the lost location, and though he searched for
+years he found no more nuggets. Finally he found a canyon which he
+believed might have been the site, but no wagon load of nuggets.
+
+John Goller was a solid, clear-thinking man--not the type to chase the
+rainbow. Gold is known to exist in the canyon and some mines have been
+operated with varying success, but none have been outstanding. It is
+quite possible that cloudbursts for which the Panamint is noted washed
+Goller's gold away or buried it under an avalanche of rock, dirt, and
+gravel. Manly, with his forgivable inclination to error refers to Goller
+as Galler and discounts the story.
+
+"Some day," said Dr. Samuel Slocum, a man who made a fortune in gold,
+"somebody will find a fabulously rich mine in that canyon." It is
+located about 12 miles south of Ballarat and is called Goler canyon--one
+of the l's in Goller's name having been dropped.
+
+
+THE LOST SPOOK. A spiritualist with tuberculosis came to Ballarat and
+employed an Indian known as Joe Button as packer and guide. He told Joe
+to lead him to the driest spot in the country. Joe took him into the
+Cottonwood Range and left him. The invalid remained for several weeks,
+returned to Ballarat en route to San Bernardino, presumably for
+supplies. He was reticent as to his luck but he had several small sacks
+filled with ore and in his haste to catch the stage, dropped a piece of
+quartz from a loosely tied sack. It was almost solid gold and weighed
+eight ounces.
+
+While in San Bernardino he died. His relatives sold the remaining ore,
+which yielded $7200. They tried to find the claim but failed.
+
+Shorty Harris heard of it months afterward and looked up Joe Button.
+With his own burros, Joe's pack horses, and an Indian known as Ignacio,
+he set out. Cloudbursts had washed out the previous trails, filled
+gulches, levelled hills and so transformed the country that the Indian
+was unable to find any trace of his previous course; gave up the hunt
+and turned back.
+
+Shorty cached his supplies and with the meager description Joe could
+give him, searched for weeks. At last he came upon a camp where he
+discovered a collection of pamphlets dealing with the occult, but no
+trails. It was apparent that these had been destroyed by floods and for
+two months Shorty searched for the diggings. A brush pile aroused his
+suspicions and removing it, he found the hole. "The ore had Uncle Sam's
+eagle all over it," Shorty said, "and the world was mine."
+
+"I returned to my camp, started spending the money. A million dollars
+for a rest home for old worn-out prospectors. Fifty thousand a year for
+all my pals...."
+
+Shorty ate his supper, spread his blankets and went to sleep with his
+dream. In the middle of the night he awoke. Something was running over
+his blanket. He raised up and in the moonlight recognized the only thing
+on earth he was afraid of--the "hydrophobic skunk."
+
+"I started packing right now," Shorty said, "and walked out. There's a
+mine there and whoever wants it can have it. I don't."
+
+
+THE LOST CANYON has some evidence of reality. Jack Allen, a miner and
+prospector of almost superhuman endurance, got drunk at Skidoo and
+filled with remorse and shame the morning after, decided to leave and
+seek a job at the Keane Wonder Mine, about 40 miles northeast across
+Death Valley. To save distance, Allen took a short cut over Sheep
+Mountain and in going through a canyon he picked up a piece of quartz
+and seeing a fleck of color, he broke it. Excited by its apparent
+richness he filled his pockets, noted his bearings and went on his way.
+When he reached the Keane Wonder he took the ore to Joe McGilliland, the
+company's assayer, who became more excited than the finder. "I'll put it
+in the button for half," Joe said.
+
+Allen agreed. The assay showed values as high as $20,000 to the ton. He
+closed his office and ran out to find Jack working in the mine. "Chuck
+this job," he cried. "Go back to that claim quick as you can. Get your
+monuments up and record the notices."
+
+Jack Allen bought a burro, loaded his supplies and went back only to
+discover that a cloudburst had destroyed all his landmarks.
+
+Both Shorty Harris and "Bob" Eichbaum, who established Stove Pipe Wells
+resort, considered this the best chance among all the legends of lost
+mines. It is wild, rough, and largely virgin country and because of that
+the hardiest prospectors always passed it by.
+
+
+THE LOST JOHNNIE. An Indian known as Johnnie used to come into York's
+store at Ballarat about once a month with gold in bullion form. He would
+sell it to York or trade it for supplies. Frequently he had credits
+amounting to a thousand or more dollars.
+
+Other Indians soon learned of Johnnie's mine and would trail him when he
+left town, but none were able to outsmart him. That it was near Arastre
+Spring was generally believed. Upon one occasion Johnnie was seen
+leaving the old arastre and disappear in the canyon. Immediately
+evidence that the arastre had been used within the hour was discovered.
+For years no prospector worked in that region without keeping his eyes
+peeled for Johnnie's bonanza.
+
+
+
+
+                             Chapter XXIII
+                      Panamint City. Genial Crooks
+
+
+The first search for gold in Death Valley country was in Panamint
+Valley.
+
+From the summit of the Slate Range on the road from Trona, one comes
+suddenly upon an enchanting and unforgettable view of the Panamint. If
+you are one who thrills at breath taking scenery you will not speak. You
+will stand and look and think. Your thoughts will be of dead worlds; of
+the silence spread like a shroud over all that you see.
+
+Below, a yellow road twists in and out of hidden dry washes, around
+jutting hills to end in the green mesquite that hides the ghost town of
+Ballarat. There the Panamint lifts two miles--its gored sides a riot of
+pastelled colors.
+
+If you have coached yourself with trivia of history it will require
+imagination's aid to accept the fact that from this wasteland came
+fortunes and industries of world-wide fame. From New York to San
+Francisco on envied social thrones, sit the children and grandchildren
+of those who with pick and shovel, here dug the family fortune in ragged
+overalls.
+
+Only recently a descendant of one of these, living in a city far
+removed, informed me her mansion was for sale, "because the neighborhood
+is being ruined...." A sheep herder newly rich on war profits, was
+moving in.
+
+Eleven miles north of Ballarat, Surprise Canyon, which leads to Panamint
+City, opens on a broad, alluvial fan that tilts sharply to the valley
+floor.
+
+In April, 1873, W. T. Henderson, whose first trip into Death Valley
+country was made to find the Lost Gunsight, came again with R. B.
+Stewart and R. C. Jacobs. In Surprise Canyon they discovered silver
+which ran as high as $4000 a ton and filed more than 80 location
+notices.
+
+Henderson was an adventurer of uncertain character who had roamed
+western deserts like a nomad. During the Indian war that threatened
+extermination of the white settlers in Inyo county, Thieving Charlie, a
+Piute, was induced by outnumbered whites to approach his warring
+tribesmen under a flag of truce and succeeded in getting eleven of them
+to return with him to Camp Independence for a peace talk. Henderson,
+with two companions waylaid and murdered them.
+
+He had been a member of the posse organized by Harry Love to shoot on
+sight California's most famous bandit--Joaquin Murietta and boasted that
+he fired the bullet which killed the glamorous Joaquin. It was he who
+cut off and pickled the bandit's head as evidence to get the reward. At
+the same time he pickled the hand of Three Fingered Jack Garcia,
+Joaquin's chief lieutenant, and the bloodiest monster the West ever saw.
+Garcia had an odd habit of cutting off the ears of his victims and
+stringing them for a saddle ornament. The slaying of Joaquin was not a
+pretty adventure and as the details came out, Henderson renounced the
+honor.
+
+The grewsome vouchers which obtained the reward became the attraction
+for the morbid on a San Francisco street and there above the din of
+traffic one heard a spieler chant the thrills it gave "for only two
+measly bits...." The exhibit was destroyed in the San Francisco fire and
+earthquake of 1906.
+
+In his book, "On the Old West Coast" Major Horace Bell states that
+Henderson confided to him there was never a day nor night that Joaquin
+Murietta did not come to him and though headless, would demand the
+return of his head; that Henderson was never frightened by the
+apparition, which would vanish after Henderson explained why he couldn't
+return the head and his excuse for cutting it off.
+
+Bell quotes Henderson: "I would never have cut Joaquin's head off except
+for the excitement of the chase and the orders of Harry Love."
+
+To give credence to the ghost story he says of Henderson, "He was for
+several years my neighbor and a more genial and generous fellow I never
+met...." Major Bell, it is known, was not always strictly factual.
+
+Following the Surprise Canyon strike, Panamint City was quickly built
+and quickly filled with thugs who lived by their guns; gamblers and
+painted girls who lived by their wits.
+
+An engaging sidewalk promoter known as E. P. Raines, who possessed a
+good front and gall in abundance, but no money, assured the owners of
+the Panamint claims that he could raise the capital necessary for
+development. He set out for the city, registered at the leading hotel,
+attached the title of Colonel to his name; exchanged a worthless check
+for $25 and made for the barroom. It was no mere coincidence that Mr.
+Raines before ordering his drink, parked himself alongside a group of
+the town's richest citizens and began to toy with an incredibly rich
+sample of ore. It was natural that members of the group should notice
+it. Particularly the multimillionaire, Senator John P. Jones, Nevada
+silver king.
+
+Soon the charming crook was the life of the party. His $25 spent, he
+actually borrowed $1000 from Jones. Having drunk his guests under the
+table, Mr. Raines went forth for further celebration and landed broke in
+the hoosegow. Hearing of his misadventure, his new friends promptly went
+to his rescue. "... Outrage ... biggest night this town ever had...."
+
+To make amends for the city's inhospitable blunder, Raines was taken to
+his hostelry, given a champagne bracer and made the honor guest at
+breakfast. "Where's the Senator?" he asked. Informed that Senator Jones
+had taken a train for Washington, Raines quickened "Why, he was
+expecting me to go with him...." He jumped up, fumbled through his
+pockets in a pretended search for money. "Heavens--my purse is gone!"
+Instantly a half dozen hands reached for the hip and Mr. Raines was on
+his way.
+
+It required but a few moments to get $15,000 from the Senator and his
+partner, Senator William R. Stewart, for the Panamint claims. He also
+sold Jones the idea of a railroad from a seaport at Los Angeles to his
+mines and this was partially built. The project ended in Cajon Pass. The
+scars of the tunnel started may still be seen.
+
+Jones and Stewart organized the Panamint Mining Company with a capital
+of $2,000,000. Other claims were bought but immediate development was
+delayed by difficulties in obtaining title because many of the owners
+were outlaws, difficult to find. A few were located in the penitentiary
+and there received payment. For some of the claims the promoters paid
+$350,000.
+
+On June 29, 1875, the first mill began to crush ore from the Jacobs
+Wonder mine. Panamint City became one of the toughest and most colorful
+camps of the West. It was strung for a mile up and down narrow Surprise
+Canyon. It was believed that here was a mass of silver greater than that
+on the Comstock and shares were active on the markets.
+
+The most pretentious saloon in the town was that of Dave Nagle, who
+later as the bodyguard of U. S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field,
+killed Judge David Terry, distinguished jurist, but stormy petrel of
+California Vigilante days. Judge Terry had represented, then married his
+client, the Rose of Sharon--Sarah Althea Hill--in her suit to determine
+whether she was wife or mistress of Senator Sharon, Comstock
+millionaire. Feuding had resulted with Field, the trial judge. Meeting
+in a railroad dining room, Judge Terry slapped Justice Field's face and
+Nagle promptly killed Terry.
+
+Poker at Panamint City was never a piker's game. Bets of $10,000 on two
+pair attracted but little comment. Gunning was regarded as a minor
+nuisance, but funerals worried the town's butcher. He had the only wagon
+that had survived the steep canyon road into the camp. "I bought it," he
+complained, "to haul fresh meat, but since there's no hearse I never
+know when I'll have to unload a quarter of beef to haul a stiff to
+Sourdough Canyon."
+
+Panamint City attained an estimated population of 3,000. Harris and
+Rhine, merchants, having the only safe in the town permitted patrons to
+deposit money for safe keeping and often had large sums. On one occasion
+they had the $10,000 payroll of the Hemlock mine.
+
+A clerk arriving early at the store, suddenly faced two gentlemen who
+directed him to open the safe and pass out the money. "Just as well
+count it as you fork it over," one ordered. The clerk had counted $4000
+when he was told to stop. "This'll do for the present," the spokesman
+said. "We'll come back and get the rest."
+
+"Yeh," added his partner. "Too damned many thugs in this town."
+
+They sallied forth on a spending spree. The down-and-out along the
+mile-long street received generous portions of the loot and a widow
+whose husband had been killed in a mine explosion, received $500.
+
+These bandits, Small and McDonald, thereafter became incredibly popular
+and the legend follows that what they stole from those who had, they
+shared with those who hadn't.
+
+Wells-Fargo and Company offered a reward of $1000 for their capture, but
+their arrest was never accomplished. Invariably they were apprised of
+the approach of pursuers and simply retired to some convenient canyon.
+The bandits further endeared themselves to the citizenry when Stewart
+and Jones arranged for the importation of a hundred Chinese laborers.
+
+This aroused the ire of the white miners and a meeting was called to
+protest. "This is a white man's town," was the cry of labor.
+
+Small and McDonald agreed. "Just leave it to us," they told the leaders.
+"No use in a lotta fellows getting hurt." They stationed themselves at
+the mouth of the canyon and when the coolies arrived, a sudden volley
+from the bandits' six-guns brought the caravan to a halt. The frightened
+Chinamen leaped from the hacks and fled in panic across the desert and
+Panamint remained a white man's town.
+
+Engaged at work around their hideout, Hungry Bill stopped to beg for
+food. They told the Indian to wait until they finished their task. His
+sullen impatience angered Small who booted him down the trail. Hungry
+Bill left cursing and told a prospector whom he met that he would return
+shortly with his tribesmen and assassinate the entire population.
+
+Panamint City was warned but Small and McDonald declared that since they
+had started the trouble, they alone should end it. Accordingly, they set
+out for Hungry Bill's ranch to stop the attack before it started. But
+near Hungry Bill's stone corral they were ambushed by the Indians. The
+bandits shot their way into the corral and barricading themselves,
+killed and wounded about half of the renegades, after which the
+remainder fled.
+
+Panamint City harbored a hoard of unsung assassins who merely lay in
+wait, shot the unwary victim down, took his poke, rolled the body into a
+ravine, went up town to spend the money.
+
+One killer who came decided to dominate the field and with that in view
+he set forth to establish himself quickly as a gunman not to be trifled
+with. He chose to display his prowess upon an inoffensive, quiet faro
+dealer known as Jimmy Bruce, who, it was easy to see, "was just a
+chicken-livered punk." The publicity of a well-done murder in such a
+setting would give prestige.
+
+Armed with two guns, the bully contrived to start an argument with
+Bruce. The indoor white of the gambler seemed to grow whiter as the rage
+of his towering tormenter reached the climax. The players moved out of
+range. The bartenders ducked under the counter. Patrons helpless to
+intervene, fled from the kill.
+
+A shot rang out. Cautiously, the bartenders lifted their heads. On the
+floor lay the bad man. Mr. Bruce was calmly lighting a cigar.
+
+There was consternation among the killers. They swore vengeance. After
+five of them had fallen before Bruce's gun, he was let alone.
+
+The silent faro dealer, it was learned too late, was surpassingly quick
+on the trigger.
+
+A spot somewhat distant from the regular cemetery was chosen for the
+burial place and it became known as Jim Bruce's private graveyard.
+
+Remi Nadeau, a French Canadian, was the first to haul freight into
+Panamint City. Nadeau was a genius of transportation. There was no
+country too rough, too remote, too wild for him. He came to Los Angeles
+in 1861 from Utah and teamed as far east as Montana.
+
+The Cerro Gordo mine, on the eastern side of Owens Lake in Inyo County
+began to ship ore in 1869 and Nadeau obtained a contract to haul the ore
+to Wilmington where it was shipped by boat to San Francisco. He soon had
+to increase his equipment to 32 teams, using more than 500 animals. For
+his return trip he bought such commodities as he could peddle or leave
+for sale at stations he built along the route.
+
+In 1872, the contract having expired, Judson and Belshaw, owners of the
+mine, received a lower bid and Nadeau was left with 500 horses on his
+hands and heavily in debt. He wanted to dispose of his outfit for the
+benefit of his creditors but they had confidence in him and persuaded
+him to "carry on." Borax discovered in Nevada saved him. Meanwhile the
+lower bidder on the Cerro Gordo job proved unsatisfactory and Judson and
+Belshaw asked Nadeau to take the old job back. But now Nadeau informed
+them they would have to buy a half interest in his outfit and advance
+$150,000 to construct relay stations at Mud Springs, Mojave, Lang's
+Springs, Red Rock, Little Lake, Cartago, and other points. They gladly
+agreed.
+
+Shortly after Nadeau began hauling across the desert, he picked up a man
+suffering from gunshot and crazed from thirst. Taking the victim to his
+nearest station, he left instructions that he be cared for.
+
+Sometime afterward, one of Nadeau's competitors whose trains had been
+held up several times by outlaws, wondered why none of Nadeau's teams or
+stations had been molested. At the time, Nadeau himself didn't know that
+the fellow whom he'd picked up on the desert was Tiburcio Vasquez, the
+bandit terror.
+
+Vasquez naively condoned his banditry. It disgusted him at dances he
+said, to see the senoritas of his race favor the interloping Americans.
+He had a singular power over women. When Sheriff William Rowland
+effected his capture, women of Los Angeles filled his cell with flowers.
+He was hanged at San Jose.
+
+Nadeau was now hauling ore from the Minnietta and the Modoc mines in the
+Argus Range on the west side of Panamint Valley. The Modoc was the
+property of George Hearst, the father of the publisher, William Randolph
+Hearst. These mines were directly across the valley from Panamint City
+and because of Nadeau's record for building roads in places no other
+dared to go, Jones and Stewart engaged him to haul out of Surprise
+Canyon, which was barely wide enough in places for a burro with a pack.
+
+On a hill, locally known as "Seventeen"--that being the per cent of
+grade, located on the old highway between Ballarat and Trona, one may
+see the dim outline of a road pitching down precipitously to the valley
+floor. This road was built by Nadeau and one marvels that anything short
+of steam power could move a load from bottom to top.
+
+Acquiring a fortune, Nadeau built the first three-story building in Los
+Angeles and the Nadeau Hotel, long the city's finest, retained favor
+among many wealthy pioneer patrons long after the more glamorous Angelus
+and Alexandria were built in the early 1900's.
+
+The first ore from the Panamint mines was shipped to England and because
+of its richness showed a profit, but difficulties arose in recovery
+processes which they did not know how to overcome. The mines would have
+paid fabulously under present day processes.
+
+Finis was written to the story of Panamint after two hectic years and in
+1877 Jones and Stewart had lost $2,000,000 and quit. It would be more
+factual to state that since they had received from the public $2,000,000
+to put into it, who lost what is a guess.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XXIV
+                 Indian George. Legend of the Panamint
+
+
+The previous chapter records accepted history of the silver discovery at
+Panamint City. Indian George Hansen had another version which he told me
+at his ranch 11 miles north of Ballarat. It fits the period and the
+people then in the country.
+
+George, when a youngster lived in the Coso Range. East of the Coso there
+was no white man for 100 miles and renegades fleeing from their crimes
+and deserters from the Union army sought hideouts in the Panamint. Thus
+George was employed as a guide by three outlaws to lead them to safe
+refuge.
+
+George, a Shoshone, had both friends and relatives among the Shoshones
+and the Piutes and took the bandits into Surprise Canyon where a camp
+for the night was chosen. While staking out his pack animals, George
+discovered a ledge of silver ore. Breaking off a chunk, he stuck it into
+his pocket, saying nothing about it until they were out of the locality.
+Then he showed the specimen and to promote a deal, gave one of them a
+sample. They wanted to see the ledge but George refused to disclose it.
+Then George said the three fellows stepped aside and after talking in
+whispers told him they didn't like the country and returning with him to
+the Coso Range, went on their way. Two or three months later they were
+back to bargain.
+
+George had traded with the white man before. They had always given him a
+few dollars and a rosy promise. "Now me pretty foxy. So I say, 'no want
+money. Maybe lose.' Him say, 'what hell you want?'
+
+"'Heap good job all time I live.'
+
+"'Okay,' him say. 'We give you job.'
+
+"I show claim." George paused, a look of smoldering hate in his dark
+eyes, then added: "I get job. Two weeks. Him say, 'you fired.' I get
+$50."
+
+All Indians and many of the old timers believe that the ledge George
+found was that for which Jones and Stewart paid $2,000,000.
+
+George made another deal worthy of mention. The town of Trona on
+Searles' Lake needed the water owned by George's relative, Mabel, who
+herded 500 goats and sold them to butchers at Skidoo, Goldfield, and
+Rhyolite where they became veal steak or lamb chops. Trona offered $30 a
+month for the use of the water. Mabel consulted George as head man of
+the Shoshones and advised Trona that the sum would not be considered. It
+must pay $27.50 or do without. A superstition regarding numbers
+accounted for the price George fixed for the water.
+
+My acquaintance with Indian George began on my first trip to Ballarat
+with Shorty Harris and was the result of a stomach ache Shorty had. I
+suggested a trip to a doctor at Trona instead.
+
+"No, sir. I'll see old Indian George. If these doctors knew as much as
+these old Indians, there wouldn't be any cemeteries."
+
+I asked what evidence he had of George's skill.
+
+"Plenty. You know Sparkplug (Michael Sherlock)? He was in a bad way.
+Fred Gray put a mattress in his pickup, laid Sparkplug on it and hauled
+him over to Trona. Nurses took him inside. Doctor looked him over and
+came out and asked Fred if he knew where old Sparkplug wanted to be
+buried. 'Why, Ballarat, I reckon,' Fred said.
+
+"Well, you take him back quick. He'll be dead when you get there. Better
+hurry. He'll spoil on you this hot weather.'
+
+"Fred raced back, taking curves on Seventeen with two wheels hanging
+over the gorge, but he made it; stopped in front of Sparkplug's shack,
+jumped out and called to me to bring a pick and shovel. Then he ran over
+to Bob Warnack's shack for help to make a coffin. Indian George happened
+to ride by the pickup and saw Sparkplug's feet sticking out. He crawled
+off his cayuse, took a look, lifted Sparkplug's eyelids and leaving his
+horse ground-hitched, he went out in the brush and yanked up some roots
+here and there. Then he went up to Hungry Hattie's and came back with a
+handful of chicken guts and rabbit pellets; brewed 'em in a tomato can
+and when he got through he funneled it down Sparkplug's throat and in no
+time at all Sparkplug was up and packing his flivver to go prospecting.
+If you don't believe me, there's Sparkplug right over there tinkering
+with his car."
+
+George's age has been a favorite topic of writers of Death Valley
+history for the last 30 years.
+
+I stopped for water once at the little stream flumed out of Hall's
+Canyon to supply the ranch. He was irrigating his alfalfa in a
+temperature of 122 degrees. I had brought him three or four dozen
+oranges and suggested that Mabel would like some of the fruit.
+
+"Heavy work for a man of your age," I said.
+
+He bit into an orange, eating both peeling and pulp. "Me papoose. Me
+only 107 years old."
+
+There were less than a dozen oranges left when I began to cast about for
+a tactful way to preserve a few for Mabel. Seeing her chopping wood in
+the scorching sun I said, "I'll bet Mabel would like an orange just now.
+Shall I call her?"
+
+"No--no--" George grunted. "Oranges heap bad for squaw," and speeding up
+his eating, he removed the last menace to Mabel.
+
+Once George told me of watching the sufferings of the Jayhawkers and
+Bennett-Arcane party:
+
+"Me little boy, first time I see white man. Whiskers make me think him
+devil. I run. I see some of Bennett party die. When all dead, we go
+down. First time Indians ever see flour. Squaws think it what make white
+men white and put it on their faces."
+
+I asked George why he didn't go down and aid the whites. "Why?" he
+asked, "to get shot?"
+
+"How many Shoshones are left?" I asked George.
+
+He counted them on his fingers. "Nineteen. Soon, none."
+
+George died in 1944 and it is safe I believe, to say that for 110 years
+he had baffled every agency of death on America's worst desert. Because
+his ranch was a landmark and the water that came from the mountains was
+good, it was a natural stopping place and he was known to thousands.
+Following a curious custom of Indians George adopted the Swedish name
+Hansen because it had euphony he liked.
+
+
+The Panamint is the locale of the legend of Swamper Ike, first told I
+believe by Old Ranger over a nation-wide hookup, while he was M.C. of
+the program "Death Valley Days."
+
+A daring, but foolhardy youngster, with wife and baby, undertook to
+cross the range. Unacquainted with the country and scornful of its
+perils, he reached the crest, but there ran out of water. He left his
+wife and the baby on the trail, comfortably protected in the shade of a
+bluff and started down the Death Valley side of the range to find water.
+
+After a thorough search of the canyons about, he climbed to a higher
+level, scanned the floor of the valley. Seeing a lake that reflected the
+peaks of the Funeral Range he made for it under a withering sun. He
+learned too late that it was a mirage and exhausted, started back only
+to be beaten down and die.
+
+After waiting through a night of terror, the young mother prepared a
+comfortable place for her baby and went in search of her husband. She
+too saw the blue lake and made for it, saw it vanish as he had. Then she
+discovered his tracks and undertook to follow him, but she also was
+beaten down and fell dead within a few feet of his lifeless body.
+
+A band of wandering Cocopah Indians crossing the range, found the baby.
+They took the child to their own habitation on the Colorado river and
+named him Joe Salsuepuedes, which is Indian for "Get-out-if-you-can."
+
+Joe grew up as Indian, burned dark by the desert sun. But he had an idea
+he wasn't Indian. Learning that he was a foundling, picked up in the
+Panamint, he set out for Death Valley, possessed of a singular faith
+that somehow he would discover evidence that he was a white man.
+
+He obtained a job as swamper for the Borax Company. When he gave his
+name the boss said, "Too many Joe's working here. We'll call you Ike."
+
+Early Indians, as you may see in Dead Man's Canyon, the Valley of Fire,
+and numerous canyons in the western desert had a habit of scratching
+stories of adventure or signs to inform other Indians of unusual
+features of a locality on the canyon walls--often coloring the tracing
+with dyes from herbs or roots. Knowing this, Swamper Ike was always
+alert for these hieroglyphs on any boulder he passed or in any canyon he
+entered.
+
+One day Swamper Ike went out to look for a piece of onyx that he could
+polish and give to the girl he loved. While seeking the onyx he noticed
+a flat slab of travertine and on it the picture story of
+"Get-out-if-you-can."
+
+Swamper Ike had justified his faith.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter XXV
+                          Ballarat. Ghost Town
+
+
+In the early 1890's gold discovered on the west side of the Panamint in
+Pleasant Canyon caused the rush responsible for Ballarat. For more than
+20 years the district had been combed by prospectors holed in at Post
+Office Spring, about one half mile south of the site upon which Ballarat
+was subsequently built. Here the government had a small army post and
+here soldiers, outlaws, and adventurers received their mail from a box
+wired in the crotch of a mesquite tree.
+
+The Radcliffe, which was the discovery mine was a profitable producer.
+The timbers and machinery were hauled from Randsburg over the Slate
+Range and across Panamint Valley, to the mouth of the canyon. There,
+under the direction of Oscar Rogers, it was packed on burros and taken
+up the steep grade to the mine site.
+
+Copperstain Joe, a noted half-breed Indian made the next strike. With a
+specimen, he went to Mojave where he showed it to Jim Cooper. For five
+dollars and a gallon of whiskey he led Cooper to the site.
+
+But his deal with Cooper interested me less than the cunning of his
+burro, Slick. Copperstain strode into a hardware store and asked for a
+lock. "It's for Slick's chain. Picks a lock soon as I turn my back--dam'
+him."
+
+The merchant showed him a lock of intricate mechanism, "He won't pick
+this. Costs more, but worth it."
+
+"I don't care what it costs," Copperstain said and bought it. Later he
+looped the chain around the burro's feet, fastened the links with the
+lock and tethered Slick to a stake. "That'll hold you--" he said
+defiantly.
+
+The next morning he was back in the store, belligerent. "Helluva lock
+you sold me. Slick picked it in no time."
+
+"Impossible."
+
+"The burro's gone, ain't he?" Copperstain bristled, and reaching into
+his pocket, produced the lock. "See that nail in the keyhole? I didn't
+put it there. Slick just found a nail--that's all."
+
+The future of Pleasant Canyon seemed assured and it was decided to move
+the two saloons and grocery to the flats below, where a town would have
+room to grow.
+
+When citizens met to choose a name, George Riggins, a young Australian
+suggested the new town be given a name identified with gold the world
+over. Ballarat in his native country met the requirement and its name
+was adopted.
+
+Shorty Harris discovered The Star, The Elephant, the World Beater, The
+St. Patrick. In Tuba, Jail, Surprise, and Goler Canyons more strikes
+were made. It is curious that none were made in Happy Canyon.
+
+The production figures of early mines are rarely dependable and the
+yield is often confused with that obtained by swindlers from outright
+sale or stock promotion. My friend, Oscar Rogers, superintendent, told
+me the Radcliffe produced a net profit of approximately $500,000. Less
+authentic are figures attributed to the following:
+
+The O. B. Joyful in Tuba Canyon, $250,000; The Gem in Jail Canyon,
+$150,000; and Shorty Harris' World Beater, $200,000.
+
+Among the noted of Ballarat residents was John LeMoyne, a Frenchman. He
+discovered a silver mine in Death Valley but the best service he gave
+the desert was a recipe for coffee. He walked into Ballarat one day and
+had lunch. The lady who owned the cafe asked if everything suited. "All
+but the coffee," John said.
+
+"How do you make your coffee?" she asked.
+
+"Madame, there's no trick about making good coffee. Plenty coffee. Dam'
+little water."
+
+From one end of Death Valley country to the other, coffee is judged by
+John LeMoyne's standard. You may not always get it, but mention it and
+the waiter will know.
+
+For years LeMoyne held his silver claim in spite of offers far beyond
+its value, which he believed was $5,000,000. But once when the urge to
+return to his beloved France was strong and Goldfield, Tonopah, and
+Rhyolite excited the nation, he weakened and decided to accept an offer
+said to have been $200,000. "But," he told the buyers, "it must be
+cash."
+
+After a huddle, John's demand was met and a check offered. John brushed
+it aside. "But this eez not cash," he complained. No, he wouldn't go to
+town to get the cash. He had work to do. "You get eet."
+
+Disgusted, the buyers left and John LeMoyne continued to wear his rags,
+eat his beans, and dream of La Belle France.
+
+A young Shoshone Indian came into Keeler excited as an Indian ever gets,
+looked up Shorty Harris and said: "Short Man, your friend go out. No
+come back. Maybe him sick." It was midsummer, but LeMoyne had undertaken
+to reach his claim.
+
+In the bottom of the valley, Shorty identified LeMoyne's tracks by a
+peculiar hobnail which LeMoyne used in his shoes. He followed the tracks
+to Cottonwood Spring and there found an old French pistol which he knew
+had belonged to LeMoyne. Convinced he was on the right trail, he went on
+and after a mile or two met Death Valley Scotty.
+
+"I know why you're here," Scotty said. "I've just found his body."
+
+LeMoyne was partially eaten by coyotes and nearby were his dead burros.
+Though tethered to the mesquite with slender cotton cords which they
+could easily have broken, the patient asses had elected to die beside
+him.
+
+And there ended the dream of the glory trail back to the France he
+loved. Those who believe in the jinx will find something to sustain
+their faith in the record of John LeMoyne's mine.
+
+After LeMoyne's death, Wild Bill Corcoran who had made and lost fortunes
+in the lush days of Rhyolite, set out from Owens Valley to relocate it.
+Never a ranting prohibitionist, Bill believed that the best remedy for
+snake bite was likker in the blood when the snake bit. When he reached
+Darwin he was not feeling well and stopped long enough for a nip with
+friends and to get a youngster to drive his car and help at the camp.
+
+It was midsummer, with record temperature but Bill wanted John LeMoyne's
+mine. Becoming worse in the valley he stopped in Emigrant Canyon and
+sent the boy back for a doctor. Bill crawled into an old shack under the
+hill. When the boy and the doctor came, they found Bill Corcoran on the
+floor, his hand stretched toward a bottle of bootleg liquor. His soul
+had gone over the hill.
+
+One after another, five others followed Bill to file on LeMoyne's claim
+and each in turn joined Bill over the hill.
+
+LeMoyne's Christian name was Jean. His surname has been spelled both
+Lemoigne and Lemoine. The claim from which Indians had formerly taken
+lead was filed upon by LeMoyne in 1882.
+
+Joe Gorsline, a graduate of Columbia, with a background of wealth, came
+to Ballarat during the rush, looked over the town. "Wouldn't spend
+another day in this dump for all the gold in the mint," he announced. He
+had a few drinks, heard a few yarns, eyed a few girls in the honkies. It
+was all new to Joe, but something about the informalities of life
+appealed to him and in a little while he was renamed Joe Goose.
+
+Then the town's constable shot its Judge and Ballarat chose him to
+succeed the deceased. Not liking the laws of the code, he made a batch
+of his own, which were never questioned. While watching the flow of time
+and liquor, he "went desert" and put aside the things that might have
+been for the more alluring things-as-they-are.
+
+When Ballarat became a ghost town, Joe Gorsline took his body to the
+city, but his soul remained and years afterward when he died, a hearse
+came down the mountain and in it was Joe Gorsline, home again. He is
+buried in a little cemetery out on the flat and in the spring the golden
+sun cups, grow all around and you walk on them to get to his grave.
+
+Adding a cultural touch to Ballarat was an English nobleman who "going
+desert" tossed his title out of the window, donned overalls and brogans
+and promptly earned the approving verdict, "An all right guy." Soon he
+was drinking with the toper and dancing with the demimonde. Like others,
+he did his own cooking and washing. He lived in a 'dobe cabin which,
+because it was on the main street, had its window shades always down.
+
+But there was one little custom of his British routine he never
+abandoned and this was discovered by accident. He stopped in John
+Lambert's saloon one evening before going to his cabin for dinner. He
+left his watch on the bar and had gone before Lambert noticed it. An
+hour later Lambert, having an opportunity to get away, took the watch to
+the cabin. John thus reported what he saw: "He was eating his dinner and
+bigod--he had on a white shirt, wing collar, and swallow tail."
+
+Ballarat chuckled but no one suggested a lynching party. They knew how
+deep grow the roots in the soil one loves. "Maybe," said Lambert,
+"that's why John Bull always wins the last battle. They give up
+nothing."
+
+A familiar figure throughout Death Valley country was
+Johnny-Behind-the-Gun--small and wiry and as much a part of the land as
+the lizard. His moniker was acquired from his habit of settling disputes
+without cluttering up the courts. Johnny, whose name was Cyte, accounted
+for three or four sizable fortunes. Having sold a claim for $35,000 he
+once bought a saloon and gambling hall in Rhyolite, forswearing
+prospecting forever.
+
+Johnny advertised his whiskey by drinking it and the squareness of his
+game, by sitting in it. One night the gentleman opposite was overwhelmed
+with luck and his pockets bulged with $30,000 of Johnny's money. Having
+lost his last chip, Johnny said, "I'll put up dis place. Ve play vun
+hand and quit."
+
+Johnny lost. He got up, reached for his hat. "Vell, my lucky friend,
+I'll take a last drink mit you." He tossed the liquor, lighted a cigar.
+"Goodnight, chentlemen," he said. "I go find me anudder mine."
+
+Johnny had several claims near the Keane Wonder in the Funeral
+Mountains, held by a sufferance not uncommon among old timers, who
+respected a notice regardless of legal formalities.
+
+Senator William M. Stewart, Nevada mining magnate, had employed Kyle
+Smith, a young mining engineer to go into the locality and see what he
+could find. Smith, a capable and likable chap, in working over the
+districts, located several claims open for filing by reason of Johnny's
+failure to do his assessment work.
+
+It is not altogether clear what happened between Johnny and Smith, but
+Smith's body was found after it had lain in the desert sun all day.
+There being no witnesses the only fact produced by sheriff and coroner
+was that Smith was dead. Johnny went free. Other escapades with
+Johnny-Behind-the-Gun occurred with such frequency that he was finally
+removed from the desert for awhile as the guest of the state.
+
+In a deal with Tom Kelly, Johnny was hesitant about signing some papers
+according to an understanding. His trigger quickness was explained to
+Kelly who was not impressed. He went to Johnny and asked him to sign up.
+Johnny refused. Kelly said calmly, "Johnny, do you see that telephone
+pole?"
+
+"Yes, I see. Vot about?"
+
+"If you don't sign, you're going to climb it." Johnny signed. He put his
+gun away when he acquired a lodging house at Beatty, where he died in
+1944.
+
+Reminiscing one day in the old saloon he had owned, Chris Wichts slapped
+the bar: "I've taken as much as $65,000 over this old bar in one month."
+He had none of it now but in a little cabin in Surprise Canyon with a
+stream running by his door, and a memory that retained only the laughs
+of his life, he didn't need $65,000.
+
+"A city fellow came into the cafe one day. Snooty sort. I told him we
+had some nice tender burro steaks. He flew off the handle. Said he
+wanted porterhouse or nothing. I served him. When he finished he
+apologized for being rude and said his porterhouse was good as he ever
+ate. I went into the kitchen and came back with a burro shank, shoved it
+in his face and said, 'Mister, you ate the meat off this burro leg.' I
+thought he'd murder me."
+
+One day when Ballarat travel was heavy, a dapper passenger dropped off
+the stage, entered the saloon, bought a drink and paid for it with a $20
+gold piece, getting $19.50 in change. When he'd gone, Shorty Harris
+standing by said: "Chris, that money doesn't sound right."
+
+Chris examined it. The gold piece had been split, hollowed out and
+filled with alloy. Chris worried awhile, then brightened when he noticed
+his place was full of loafers playing solitaire; pulling at soggy pipes;
+waiting for a "live one." "Boys," said Chris, "old Whiskers ain't
+getting much play. Let's go down and see him."
+
+Whiskers was his competitor down the street.
+
+A few moments later the bat-wing doors of Whiskers' place flew open and
+Chris and his bums swarmed in. Chris laid an arm on the bar. "What'll it
+be fellows?" Then he turned to the loafers along the walk "Line up, you
+guys and have a drink."
+
+They did and when the drinks were downed, Chris laid the phony gold
+piece on the bar, received his change and with his crowd returned to his
+bar. An hour later he was still laughing to himself over the trick he'd
+played on Whiskers when his own sawed-off doors flapped open and
+Whiskers barged in, followed by his own mob of moochers. Whiskers
+ordered for the house and laid down the $20. Chris gulped and gave the
+change.
+
+That coin circulated in every store and saloon in Ballarat for more than
+a year. Everybody knew it was phony, but accepted it without question
+and came to regard it with something akin to affection. Then one day a
+gentleman in spats came along and the $20 gold piece left forever.
+
+Billy Heider, a slim, genial fellow who had been a hat salesman in a
+smart toggery shop in Los Angeles came not for gold but to escape
+alimony. His easy smile masked a stubbornness that nothing could
+conquer. "... she got a smart lawyer and dated the Judge," Billy said.
+
+He hung his bench-made suit on a peg, slipped into overalls, cut off one
+sleeve of his tuxedo to cover a canteen, spread the rest on the floor
+beside his bed to step on in the morning and so--transition. Eventually
+he began to prospect, kept at it for 20 years; found nothing, but he
+beat alimony.
+
+Usually mines were "salted" in shaft or tunnel to separate the sucker
+from his money, but it remained for a Ballarat woman to find a simpler
+way.
+
+Michael Sherlock, known as Sparkplug, because of continual trouble with
+that feature of his automobile, gave me her formula: "She owned a claim
+in Pleasant Canyon that had a showing of gold. She wanted $10,000 for
+it. A rich auto dealer came along to look at it. He was worth at least
+$5,000,000. She told him to take his mining engineer and get his own
+samples and when he got back she'd have a chicken dinner waiting.
+
+"They got the samples, came down, parked the car in front of her house,
+got their bellies full of chicken and went back to the city. A couple of
+days later the millionaire was back. Couldn't get his money into her
+hands quick enough. Word went out there would be work enough for all
+comers and we figured on boom times. But he couldn't find ore to match
+her samples."
+
+"What happened?" I asked.
+
+"While he was eating chicken dinner that night, her Indian hired man
+went out to his auto and switched samples."
+
+I asked Sparkplug why he didn't sue her.
+
+"If you had $5,000,000 would you want the whole dam' state laughing at
+you?"
+
+
+Randsburg, which boomed in the early Eighties as a result of gold
+strikes in the Yellow Aster, the King Solomon, and later the Kelly
+silver mine, soon became one of the principal eastern gateways to the
+Panamint and to Death Valley by way of Granite Wells and Wingate Pass.
+
+A curious story of a man haunted by his conscience is that of William
+Dooley and told to me by Dr. Samuel Slocum, who had come to Randsburg
+from Arizona after making a fortune in gold.
+
+A howling blizzard had driven everyone from the streets and the campers
+in Fiddlers' Gulch into Billy Hevron's saloon. Dr. Slocum, lost in the
+blinding snow and stumbling along the street, felt with his hands for
+walls he couldn't see, while a barroom noise guided him to the door.
+
+At the bar he saw William Paddock, mining engineer. "Bill, you're the
+man I'm looking for. I can't find anyone who can tell me how to get to
+Goler Canyon in Panamint Valley. You've been there and I want you to
+draw me a map."
+
+Paddock, finishing a drink ordered one for Slocum and introduced him to
+a man at his side: "This is Mr. Dooley," Paddock said, and the doctor
+saw a great hulk of a man with black whiskers, small eyes, and an uneasy
+look. Before a word was spoken Slocum sensed Dooley's instant dislike of
+him.
+
+Slocum ordered a round of drinks. Dooley refused and walked to the
+farther end of the bar.
+
+Paddock followed Dooley after a moment, talked with him and returned to
+his drink. He said to Slocum: "I'm in a curious situation. I don't know
+much about Dooley, but down in Mexico he saved my life. Now it's my turn
+to save his. He just killed a man in Arizona and came here to hide out.
+I'm taking him to Goler Canyon soon as this blizzard is over. He thinks
+you are a deputy U. S. Marshal and claims that he has seen you before
+and that you are no doctor."
+
+"He may have seen me in Arizona at Gold Hill," Slocum said.
+
+"The best way I can help you," Paddock continued, "is to sign the road
+as I go and after a day or two you can follow us."
+
+On the day following Paddock's departure Doctor Slocum set out. The next
+day he came upon a newly-made grave, outlined with stone. On a redwood
+board used for the marker was carved this inscription:
+
+ _"Here lies Bill Dooley who died by giving Wm. Paddock the dam' lie."_
+
+With no reason to shed tears, the Doctor following Paddock's signs,
+reached Goler Canyon, made camp and knowing that Paddock intended to
+occupy a stone cabin farther up the gulch, he started up the trail. He'd
+gone only a short distance when he saw Paddock approaching, waving his
+arms in a signal for Slocum to go back. The Doctor stopped.
+
+When Paddock came down he said, "For God's sake, Doc, get back to your
+camp. Dooley is behind that big boulder above us with a Winchester
+trained on you."
+
+"Why, I thought he was dead...."
+
+"No," Paddock smiled grimly. "He worked all night digging that grave.
+Said it would throw you off his trail. I can't get it out of his head
+you're a marshal."
+
+Slocum had made a gruelling trip to free and open country and he had no
+intention of being driven out. "I'll go up and talk to him," he said.
+Paddock warned him that it would be useless and might be fatal, but
+Slocum insisted and they went up the trail, Paddock going in front to
+shield him.
+
+Dooley was outside the cabin with a rifle in the crook of his arm, his
+finger on the trigger.
+
+Slocum was unarmed. He calmly assured Dooley he was not an officer; that
+he had no intention of disclosing Dooley's whereabouts, "But this is
+free country and I intend to stay."
+
+Dooley's reaction was a noncommittal grunt. However, violence was
+avoided. When the Doctor returned to his camp, Paddock decided it would
+be best to accompany him as a measure of safety. Explaining to Dooley
+that he would remain with the Doctor to inspect a claim, he remained as
+a body-guard for three days. On the fourth he went up to the stone cabin
+and discovered Dooley had loaded his wagon with all the camp equipment
+and supplies, including a green water keg and left for parts unknown.
+
+Just across the range was Hungry Bill's country. A year or so afterward
+Doctor Slocum, crossing the mountains into Death Valley, stopped at
+Hungry Bill's Six Spring Canyon Ranch and noticed a green cask. Hungry
+Bill said that he had found the keg floating on the ooze near Badwater.
+"Somewhere under that ooze," Doctor Slocum said, "lies Bill Dooley, his
+team, his wagon, and its load."
+
+
+An interesting character of this area was Toppy Johnson, who scouted for
+Senator George Hearst and later had charge of copper claims belonging to
+William Randolph Hearst, near Granite Wells.
+
+While there, Toppy employed Aunt Liza, a negro cook. Aunt Liza came from
+Randsburg with an enormous trunk. She was a good cook, but an awful
+thief and nearly everything Toppy owned except the furniture disappeared
+piece by piece. When his razor vanished he looked through the trunk and
+found the loot. He didn't want to lose Aunt Liza, so he removed a few of
+the more needed things, leaving the rest to be recovered by instalments.
+Thereafter it was a game of losing and retrieving.
+
+As strange a coincidence as I've ever heard attended the end of Toppy
+Johnson. Sent to Mexico when Pancho Villa was overrunning the country,
+he fled to Mazatlan when Pancho announced he would shoot on sight both
+native and foreigners who were not in sympathy with his marauding.
+
+All boats were crowded with refugees, both native and alien, but Toppy
+was permitted to join the hundreds willing to sleep on deck. Toppy
+unwittingly chose a spot over the saloon where drunken celebrants soon
+began shooting at the ceiling.
+
+A shot penetrated the flooring of the craft's deck and Toppy's abdomen.
+An American physician sleeping alongside was awakened by Toppy's groans,
+attended him, but saw there was no hope. The physician asked his name,
+the object being to notify the victim's relatives.
+
+"If my doctor were only here," Toppy moaned, "he could save me."
+
+"Who is your doctor?"
+
+"Dr. Samuel Slocum, of Pasadena," Toppy said, and died.
+
+The physician was Dr. Slocum's nephew.
+
+Thirty-four miles south of Ballarat at the end of a narrow canyon
+leading from Wingate Pass road into Death Valley, one comes upon a
+breath-taking riot of color. Pink hills. Blue hills. Hills of dazzling
+white, mottled with black and green. Yellow hills. Maroon and jade
+hills.
+
+A gentleman of fine fancy and fluent tongue passed that way, learned
+that under the hills was a deposit of epsom salts. Then he went to
+Hollywood where salts met money. He talked convincingly of nature's drug
+store. "Just sink a shovel into the ground and up comes two dollars'
+worth of medicine recommended by every doctor in the country. No
+educating the public. Everybody knows epsom salts."
+
+There was no flaw in that argument and Hollywood dipped into its
+pockets. A mono rail was strung from Searles' Lake over the Slate Range
+through Wingate Pass and up the slopes to the pink hills. There rose
+Epsom City. For awhile the balanced cars scooted along that gleaming
+rail, bearing salts to market--dreams of wealth to Hollywood.
+
+But the world had enough salts, Epsom City failed. Nothing is left to
+remind one of the incredible folly but a few boards and a pile of bones.
+The bones are those of wild burros slaughtered by vandals who in a
+project as inhuman as ever excited lust for money, went through the
+country and killed the helpless animals, to be sold to manufacturers of
+chicken and dog food.
+
+A singular character known as Dad Smith, who had come to California with
+John C. Fremont was one of the earliest settlers at Post Office Springs.
+Smith had been a scout with Kit Carson in the Apache wars in Arizona and
+returned to the lower Panamint in 1860, to hunt gold in Butte Valley,
+where, nearing 90 he dug a tunnel 100 feet in length. Found there
+delirious, with pneumonia, by Dr. Samuel Slocum, he was removed to the
+Doctor's camp where Mrs. Slocum nursed him through his convalescence.
+When he recovered he decided to give Mrs. Slocum a token of his
+gratitude.
+
+At the time, Barstow and Daggett were the most convenient stations for
+prospectors in the southerly area. At Daggett they likkered at Mother
+Featherlegs'. At Barstow they bought at Judge Gooding's store or at Aunt
+Hannah's, and drank at Sloan and Hart's saloon. Dad's money, as was that
+of others, was left with them for safe keeping. So he walked every mile
+of a ten days' round trip to get a box of chocolates for Mrs. Slocum. A
+little chore like that made no difference to Dad. He encountered a
+desert rain and arrived at the Slocum cabin drenched. They persuaded him
+to remain overnight and led him to a tent.
+
+Seeing that water dripped from Dad's blankets, Dr. Slocum went for dry
+bedding. When he returned, Dad had his own bedding spread on the ground.
+"Here, Dad--take this dry bedding...."
+
+"Not on your life," Dad said as he crawled into his own. "I'd catch
+cold, sure as hell."
+
+Two noted athletes of the period went into the Panamint for a vacation.
+When they asked for a guide, they were told to get Dad, but after
+looking him over they decided he lacked stamina, but engaged him when
+they could find no one else. The route was over the Panamint into Death
+Valley and back through Redlands Canyon--a trip to test the hardiest.
+
+On the third day Dad returned alone. Asked about his companions, he
+grumbled: "They're down and out. Now I've got to haul 'em in."
+
+He took his burros, lashed the victims securely on the beasts and
+brought them in.
+
+Remembered by oldsters, was Archie McDermot, a big fellow of
+unbelievable strength who was an all-purpose employee of Dr. Slocum.
+
+While they were camped at Barstow one night, Archie went up town to pass
+a cheerful hour and during the course of the evening a brawl started and
+Archie suddenly found himself the object of a mass attack by five burly
+miners. Archie knocked them down as they came, threw them out and
+returned to his drinking. The constable went in to take Archie. Archie
+tossed him through the door. The officer didn't want to kill him, and
+collecting a posse of four brawny helpers, tried again. Archie pitched
+them out.
+
+Being a friend of Slocum, the constable now went to see the Doctor.
+"Doc, can't you come down and do something about Archie? Knowing how you
+need him, I don't want to kill him...."
+
+Doctor Slocum went, discovered that Archie, after throwing everybody out
+of the place, had seized the long heavy bar, turned it on its side and
+was sitting on the edge with a bottle in each hand. Doctor Slocum
+regarded the wreckage and then Archie. "Good Lord, Archie, what have you
+done?"
+
+"Nothing, Doc," Archie said. "Just having a nip. Take one on the
+house...."
+
+"What about this fight?"
+
+"Fight?" repeated Archie. "Oh, that--some fellows tried to start a
+little ruckus but I didn't pay much attention to it."
+
+But if Archie had no fear of a dozen live men, he was terrorized by a
+dead one.
+
+Doctor and Mrs. Slocum, with Archie, were leaving their camp in the
+Panamint. The thermometer under the canopy of the vehicle registered 135
+degrees--hot for an April day, even in Death Valley country. As they
+drove along, the Doctor noticed some clothing on a bush. "Seems
+strange," he said. "Let's look around."
+
+Archie skirmished through the bushes. Presently he returned, his face
+white, horror in his eyes. He grabbed the wagon wheel, his quivering
+bulk shaking the heavily loaded vehicle. "For God's sake, Doc. Go and
+look!"
+
+The Doctor saw a sight as pitiable as it is ever man's lot to see--a
+young fellow dying from thirst on the desert. His protruding tongue
+split in the middle. Unable to speak, though retaining a spark of life.
+The fingers of both hands worn to stubs.
+
+Kneeling, Doctor Slocum asked the victim where he came from; where he
+wished to go. No sign came from the staring eyes. Finally the Doctor
+said, "We want to help you. We have water. We're going to take you
+home." At the mention of home, a feeble smile came, and two tears, the
+last two drops in that wasted body, rolled down his cheeks and dried in
+the desert sun and then he died. There was nothing to do but bury the
+body.
+
+"You'll have to help me, Archie," the Doctor said.
+
+A look of terror came into Archie's eyes. "Doc," he pleaded, "ask me
+anything but that...."
+
+The man who'd cleaned up Barstow, quailed in superstitious fear at the
+thought of touching the dead.
+
+They looked around for a place to dig a grave. But the country was
+covered with malpai and lava rock and they couldn't dig in it. The
+Doctor wrapped the body in a piece of canvas and Mrs. Slocum aided in
+lifting it into the wagon. She drove the team while the Doctor and
+Archie walked along, looking for loose earth and finally found a spot.
+Archie dug the grave. The Doctor lowered the body and Archie with shut
+eyes, filled the grave.
+
+A press story of the finding brought a flood of letters from all parts
+of the country. Such stories always do. From mothers, wives,
+sweethearts--but none from men. It's always the woman who cares.
+
+Such deaths are due to inexperience. This boy had no canteen. Just
+around the corner of a jutting hill was Lone Willow Spring.
+
+Though scarcely a vestige remains, there was once a town at Lone Willow.
+Saloons and an enormous dance hall lured the Bad Boys and there the
+trail ended for scores reported as missing men.
+
+Cyclone Wilson, a nephew of Shady Myrick who built a sizable export
+trade in gem stones, and for whom Myrick Springs is named, was taking a
+wagon load of Chinese coolies to work at Old Harmony. All Chinamen
+looked alike to Cyclone and he didn't know that these were newcomers. It
+was his custom to discharge his passengers at the foot of a steep hill
+near Lone Willow and require them to walk to the top.
+
+As usual, upon reaching this grade he set his brakes and waited for the
+coolies to get out. None moved, then he ordered them out. The Chinamen
+sat in stony silence. He repeated the order with no result other than
+jabber among themselves. Angered, Cyclone reached for his long
+blacksnake whip. It had a "cracker" on the end of which was a buckshot.
+With unerring accuracy he aimed the whip at the nearest coolie and
+overboard he went. The others leaped out and drawing knives from their
+big loose sleeves, massed for assault.
+
+Cyclone reached for a pistol--always carried on the wagon seat, and
+started shooting. His toll was five Chinamen.
+
+The cause of the murders, it was later learned, was due entirely to the
+fact that none of the Chinamen had understood a word Cyclone had spoken.
+
+A Chinaman at Lone Willow, who spoke English made his countrymen bury
+the dead.
+
+
+Today Ballarat is a ghost town and soon every trace of it will be gone.
+Roofless walls lift like prayerful arms to gods that are deaf.
+
+In the late afternoon when the shadows of the Argus Range have crept
+across the valley, a few old timers come out of leaning dobes and stand
+bareheaded to look about. The afterglow of a sun is upon the peaks and
+the afterglow of dreams in their hearts. They people the empty streets
+with men long dead, some in unmarked graves in the little cemetery on
+the flat just beyond the town. Some on the trails, God only knows where.
+These dead they see pass in and out of the old saloons. These dead they
+hear again. Glasses tinkle, slippered feet dance again.
+
+Tomorrow? Their pale eyes lift to the canyons and though dimmed a
+little, they see one hundred billion dollars.
+
+
+What of Shoshone? It remains with changes of course. The shanties hauled
+from Greenwater have been hauled somewhere else. No longer do I step
+from my car as I have so often and call to those on the bench. "Move
+over, fellows" and hear their familiar greeting: "Where the hell _you_
+been?"
+
+Instead, I drive to an air conditioned cabin and stroll back to the
+former site of the bench, so long the social center. There I see a sign
+over a door which reads, "Crowbar" and I enter a dreamy cavern with
+dimmed, rosy lights, hear the music of ice against glass and refuse to
+believe the startling sight of an honest-to-goodness old timer tending
+bar in a clean white shirt.
+
+Likewise I balk at the white lines I walk between as I cross the asphalt
+road to the store.
+
+But above Shoshone the same blue skies stretch without end over a world
+apart, and under them are the same uncrowded trails; the same far
+horizons for the vagabond's foot and the peace "which passeth all
+understanding."
+
+
+
+
+                                 INDEX
+
+
+                                   A
+  Amargosa River, 96
+  American Potash and Chemical Co., 33
+  Archilette Spring, 95
+  Augerreberry, Pete, 58
+
+
+                                    B
+  Ballarat, 175
+  Ballarat Mines, production figures, 176
+  Beatty, Monte, 53, 77
+  Benson, Myra, 68, 133-134-135
+  Benson, Jack, 133-134-135
+  Bennett, Bellerin' Teck, 23
+  Bennett, Charles, freighter, 31
+  Bennett's Well, 21
+  Black Mountain, story of, 20, 60-61
+  Bodie, toughest of the Gold Towns, 74
+  Borax, discovery of, 26
+  Bradbury Well, 76
+  Bowers, Sandy, gets a fortune for a board bill, 74
+  Brannan, Sam, Mormon leader, 95
+  Brandt, "Arkansas" Ben, 71, 83, 138
+  Breyfogle, Jacob; stories of, 154
+  Brown, Charles, Deputy Sheriff at Greenwater; store at Shoshone;
+          road builder, supervisor, superintendent of Lila C. Mine
+          at Dale; elected to senate; Chap. XV, 102
+  Brown (nee Fairbanks) Stella, 69, 71, 104-105, 107, 116, 135
+  Brougher Wils, at Tonopah, 49
+  Bruce, Jimmy, private graveyard, 168
+  Bullfrog Mine, discovered, 53-54-55
+  Butler, James, discoverer of Tonopah silver, 48-49-50, 59
+  Bulette, Julia, famed madam of Virginia City, 74
+
+
+                                    C
+  Cahill, Washington, Borax Co. official, 35-36
+  Calico Mountains, 15
+  Calico, stories of, 15, 16
+  Carrillo, Jose Antonio, 97
+  Carson, Kit, guide and scout in Shoshone country, 20, 93-94-95
+  Casey, John "Cranky," noted desert character, 136, 137-138
+  Cave Spring, 134
+  Cazaurang, Jean, wealthy miser, death of, 100-101
+  China Ranch, stories of, 80, 94
+  Clark, W. A., 60
+  Clark, "Patsy," 60
+  Coleman, W. T., 27-28, 30
+  Comstock, "Pancake," famous lode named for; buys a woman; suicide,
+          48, 74
+  Corcoran, "Wild Bill," famous prospector; death of, 58, 177
+  Counterfeit gold piece, 179-180
+  Cross, Ed, partner and co-discoverer of Bullfrog Mine, 53
+
+
+                                    D
+  Dayton, James, superintendent Furnace Creek Ranch, death of,
+          35-36, 122
+  Dante's View, 151
+  Davis, Buford, buys Noonday Mine; death of, 158
+  Death Valley, cause of; history of, geology, temperatures; first
+          settlers, 19
+  Decker, Judge, convivial Ballarat Justice of Peace, murdered, 62
+  Delameter, John, early freighter, 156
+  Diamond Tooth Lil, glamorous madam, 62-63
+  Dooley, William, bad man, 181-182-183
+  Driscoll, Dan, partner of Shorty Harris, 91, 120
+  Dublin Gulch, 69
+  Dumont, Eleanor, (Madame Moustache), charmer of the Forty Niners,
+          74
+
+
+                                    E
+  Eichbaum, Bob, toll road, 21
+  Egbert, Adrian, at Cave Spring, 134
+  Epsom City, salts deposit; mono rail, 184
+
+
+                                    F
+  Fairbanks, Ralph Jacobus, at Ash Meadows; at Greenwater; at
+          Shoshone, stories of; death; Ch. XVI, 104-105, 108,
+          110-111
+  Fairbanks, Celestia Abigail, 105
+  Fennimore, James, "Old Virginny"; named Virginia City; swapped
+          Ophir Mine for blind pony, 74
+  Flake, Sam, old timer, poker student, death, 68, 78
+  Fremont, John C., 93
+  French, Dr. Darwin, seeks Lost Gunsight, names Darwin Falls and
+          town of, 21
+  Funston, General Frederick, identifies and names Death Valley
+          flora, 24
+
+
+                                    G
+  Gayhart, W. C., assayer, part owner of Tonopah Discovery Mine,
+          49-50
+  George, "Rocky Mountain," 76
+  Godey, Alex, Fremont scout, fights Indians at Resting Springs, 94
+  Goldfield, named, 50
+  Goodwin, Ray, park official, 147, 149
+  Gorsline, Joe, Ballarat Judge, 177-178
+  Gower, Harry, Borax Co. official, mgr. Furnace Creek Ranch, 41
+  Grandpa Springs, hole-in for old time prospectors, 50
+  Grantham, Louise, girl prospector, 139
+  Gray, Fred, Ballarat prospector, 116
+  Gray, W. B., 77
+  Greenwater, copper strike, stories of, 60, 63
+  Gunsight Mine, 21-22, 157-158
+
+
+                                    H
+  "Happy Bandits" (Small and McDonald), 164-165, 167-168
+  Harris, Frank "Shorty," Ch. XVII, 113
+  Harrisburg, scene of gold strike, 57, 114
+  Harmon, Pete, misses millions, 117
+  Hellgate Pass, 64
+  Heider, Billy, flees alimony, 180
+  Heinze, August, Copper King, 60
+  Henderson, W. T., names Telescope Peak, kills Joaquin Murietta,
+          famous bandit, and pickles head; sees victim's ghost,
+          164-165
+  Hilton, Frank, finds body of James Dayton, 36
+  Hoagland George, burial of, 72-73
+  Holmes, Helen, story of thriller, "Perils of Pauline," 127
+  Hungry Hattie, Ballarat character, 119
+  Huhn, Ernest (Siberian Red), diligent prospector, 68
+  Hungry Bill, Panamint chief, 87
+  Hunt, Capt. Jefferson, Mormon guide; prominent in California
+          culture, 21
+
+
+                                    I
+  Ickes, Harold, visits Shoshone, 149-150
+  Indians of the desert, conflicting opinions of, Ch. VII, 43
+  Indian George Hansen, owner of Indian Ranch, discovered silver at
+          Panamint City, 154, 155, 171-172-173
+  Ishmael, George, 152
+
+
+                                    J
+  Johnnie Mine, 90
+  Johnson, Albert, owner and builder of Scotty's Castle, 133
+  Johnson, Bob, tamps friend's grave, 72-73
+  Johnson, Toppy, supt. of desert mine of W. R. Hearst, 183
+  Jones, Herman, discovered Red Wing Mine, road builder, 72, 142
+  Jones, J. P., Nev. silver king at Panamint city, 23, 166, 170
+  Johnny-Behind-the-Gun, 178-179
+
+
+                                    K
+  Kellogg, Lois, owner of Manse Ranch, 101
+  Kempfer, Don, mining engineer, official of Sierra Talc. Co., 158
+
+
+                                    L
+  Lee, Philander, owner of Resting Springs Ranch, 97
+  Lee, Cub, built first house at Shoshone, slays wife and son, 98
+  Lee, John D., established Lee's Ferry; executed for massacre of
+          emigrants at Mountain Meadows, 90
+  Lee, "Shoemaker," 98
+  Legend of Swamper Ike, 173-174
+  Le Moyne, Jean, recipe for coffee, story of mine, death, 176-177
+  Lone Willow, murders at, 186
+  Longstreet, Jack, Ash Meadows bad man, 90
+  Lost Mines, all of Ch. XXII, 154-163
+
+
+                                    M
+  Main, Eddie, 69, 78
+  McDermot, Archie, Strong Man, 185
+  McGarn, "Whitey Bill," 70, 78, 138
+  Manly, William Lewis, 23, 157, 161
+  Manse Ranch, 155
+  Metbury Spring, first name of Shoshone, 72
+  Myers, Al, discoverer of Gold Field, 50
+  Modine, Dan, deputy sheriff, early owner of China Ranch, 63, 68,
+          84
+  Montgomery, Bob, owner of Montgomery Shoshone Mine, buys Skidoo
+          discovery claim on sight, 54-56
+  Murray, Billy, saves John S. Cook Bank and Goldfield from "run,"
+          51
+  Murietta, Joaquin, 95
+  Myrick, Shady, exports gem stones, 186
+
+
+                                    N
+  Nadeau, Remi, genius of transportation, 169
+  Nagle, Dave, 166
+  Naylor, George, sheriff, treasurer, supervisor of Inyo Co., 102
+  Nels, Dobe Charlie, at Bodie; at Shoshone, 74-75
+  Noble, Levi, geologist, 39-40-41
+
+
+                                    O
+  Oakes, Sir Harry; in Alaska; at Greenwater; at Shoshone; makes
+          strike in Canada; builds palace at Niagara Falls; knighted
+          by King George V; slain by son-in-law, it is said--a
+          renegade French count, in Bahamas, 105, 111-112
+  Oddie, Tasker, mining tycoon, 49-50, 60
+  Owens Valley, rape of, 147-148
+
+
+                                    P
+  Pacific Coast Borax Co., organized, 28-29
+  Pahrump Ranch, 23
+  Panamint City, 166-167-168
+  Panamint Tom, story of, 23, 109
+  Perry, J. W. S., supt. Borax Co., designer of 20 mule team wagons,
+          31
+  Pietsch, Henry, shot Ballarat judge, 62
+  Plato, Joe, on the Comstock Lode, 76
+  Post Office Spring, early army post, 175
+
+
+                                    R
+  Radcliffe Mine, 175
+  Raines, E. P., genial crook, 165-166
+  Randsburg, gold discovered at, 181
+  Rasor, Clarence, Borax Co. official, 151
+  Resting Springs, named by Mormons, 96
+  Rich, Charles, Mormon pioneer, 96
+  Rickard, sports promoter, 51
+  "Rocky Mountain" George, prospector, 76, 77
+  Rogers, John, Bennett-Arcane party, 21
+  Rosie, squaw, love life of, 88
+  Ryan, Joe, desert philosopher, 70-71, 73, 82
+  Rhyolite, discovery of gold, 54-55
+
+
+                                    S
+  Saratoga Springs, 93
+  Schwab, Charles M., at Rhyolite; at Greenwater, 55, 60
+  Scott, Bob, discoverer of Confidence Mine, 91
+  Scott, Mary, squaw, 90
+  Scott, Walter, "Death Valley Scotty," 69, Ch. XIX, 130
+  Scrugham, James, Governor and U.S. Senator of Nevada, 77
+  Searles, John, 32-33, 159
+  Sherlock, Michael, "Sparkplug," 180
+  Skidoo, gold strike, 55-56
+  Slim, Death Valley, bad man, 102-103
+  Slim, Jackass, Ch. II, 20; Ch. XI, 64-65
+  Slocum, Dr. Samuel, 181-186
+  Smith, Francis M. ("Borax Smith"), 29-33, 38
+  Smith, "Dad," Old Man of the Mountains; came with Kit Carson, 184
+  Smith, Pegleg, 97-98-99
+  Snake House, 78
+  Sorrells, Maury, 138
+  Stewart, Wm. R., Nevada Senator, mines at Panamint City, 23, 170
+  Stiles, Ed, first driver of 20 mule team, 31, 35, 37
+  Stump Springs, 23
+  Stovepipe Wells, 21
+
+
+                                    T
+  Teck, Bellowin', 23
+  Tecopa Cap, Indian Chief, 78, 79
+  Tecopa Hot Spring, 79
+  Tecopa, John, discoverer of Johnnie Mine, 90
+  Telescope Peak, 22, 93, 139
+  Temperature in Death Valley, 41, 42
+  Tonopah, discovery of silver, 50, 51
+  Towne's Pass, named, 21
+  Trona, 33
+  Twenty-mule team, first driver, design of, 31
+  Tule Hole, story of, 35, 36-37
+
+
+                                    V
+  Vasquez, Tiburcio, bandit terror, 169
+  Volmer, Joe, 141
+
+
+                                    W
+  Wagons, 20 mule team, design of, 31
+  Wamack, Bob, at Confidence Mine, 91
+  Weed, Tom, noted Indian, death of, 89-90
+  Wichts, Chris, noted Ballarat character, story of, 61, 179
+  Williams, George, 142
+  Williams, Bill, preacher and plunderer, 96-97
+  Wilson, Cyclone, massacre of Chinamen at Lone Willow, 186, 187
+  Wingfield, George, famous gambler, luck of, 51
+  Winters, Aaron and Rosie, discovered borax in Death Valley, 26
+  Wolfskill, 92
+
+
+                                    Y
+  Younger, Tillie, member of Jesse James guerrillas, dies at
+          Shoshone, 73
+  Yundt, John, Lee and Sam, owners of Manse Ranch, 99-100
+
+
+
+
+                              _The Author_
+
+
+Nearly every newspaperman looks forward to the time when he can get away
+from the pressure of his journalistic job and retire to a little cottage
+by the sea, or a cabin in the mountains, and write a book.
+
+The only difference between William Caruthers--Bill, to his friends--and
+a majority of the others is that he did write his book on the spot,
+preserved it and after retiring to his orange grove near Ontario,
+California he got around to the job of revision, which resulted in these
+pages.
+
+Born on the banks of the Cumberland River in Tennessee, Caruthers'
+career as a journalist began when he became editor of the local weekly
+paper at the age of 16. He took the job, he explains, because no one
+else wanted it.
+
+His family wanted him to be a lawyer, and in compliance with their
+wishes he returned to school and was admitted to the bar in Tennessee
+when he was 19. But he wanted to be a newspaperman, and vowed that when
+he won his first $2,000 fee he would quit law. Successful as a young
+lawyer, the time soon came when he won a tough case against a big
+insurance company--and that was his chance. He closed his law office
+forever.
+
+For a time he was editor of Illustrated Youth and Age, the largest
+monthly in the South. He wrote feature articles for the Nashville
+American, Nashville Banner, the old New York World, the Christian
+Science Monitor, fiction for Collier's Weekly and other important
+magazines. His writings have appeared in most Western magazines.
+
+After coming to California he first went to work on the Los Angeles
+Examiner, quitting that job to become a publisher and his little
+magazine, _The Bystander_ gained nationwide circulation. While editing
+this magazine he became editor of Los Angeles' first theatrical
+magazine, _The Rounder_, which was a "must" on the list of early movie
+stars and soon discovered that the most lucrative field for a journalist
+was in ghost writing. As a "ghost" he addressed big political
+conventions, assemblies of governors and mayors and in one instance, a
+jury as the prosecutor. One eastern industrialist paid him a fabulous
+fee when the address Caruthers wrote for him brought a great ovation.
+
+Finally his physician warned him to slow down. It was then--in
+1926--that he came to the desert, and, during the intervening 25 years,
+has spent much of his time in the Death Valley region. He has witnessed
+the transition of Death Valley from a prospector's hunting ground to a
+mecca for winter tourists. This is a book of the old days in Death
+Valley.
+
+
+
+
+                          Transcriber's Notes
+
+
+--Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
+  is public-domain in the country of publication.
+
+--Corrected a few palpable typos.
+
+--Added page numbers to plates (in roman numerals).
+
+--Included a transcription of the text within some images.
+
+--In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
+  _underscores_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Loafing Along Death Valley Trails, by 
+William Caruthers
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOAFING ALONG DEATH VALLEY TRAILS ***
+
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+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Loafing Along Death Valley Trails, by William Caruthers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Loafing Along Death Valley Trails
+       A Personal Narrative of People and Places
+
+Author: William Caruthers
+
+Release Date: April 30, 2016 [EBook #51899]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOAFING ALONG DEATH VALLEY TRAILS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div id="cover" class="img">
+<img id="coverpage" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Loafing Along Death Valley Trails; A Personal Narrative of People and Places" width="500" height="766" />
+</div>
+<div class="box">
+<h1>LOAFING ALONG
+<br />DEATH VALLEY TRAILS</h1>
+<p class="center"><span class="ss">By WILLIAM CARUTHERS</span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="large"><span class="ss">A Personal Narrative of People and Places</span></span></p>
+<p class="center smaller">COPYRIGHT 1951 BY WILLIAM CARUTHERS</p>
+<p class="center small">Printed in the U.S.A. by P-B Press, Inc., Pomona, Calif.
+<br />Published by Death Valley Publishing Co.
+<br />Ontario, California</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_5">5</div>
+<h2 id="c1"><span class="small">DEDICATION</span></h2>
+<p>To one who, without complaint or previous experience
+with desert hardships, shared with me the difficult and often
+dangerous adventures in part recorded in this book, which
+but for her persistent urging, would never have reached the
+printed page. She is, of course, my wife&mdash;with me in a
+sense far broader than the words imply: <i>always&mdash;always</i>.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_7">7</div>
+<h2 class="center">CONTENTS</h2>
+<dl class="toc">
+<dt><a href="#c1">Dedication</a> 5</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c2">This Book</a> 9</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c3"><span class="cn">I </span>A Foretaste of Things to Come</a> 11</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c4"><span class="cn">II </span>What Caused Death Valley</a> 19</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c5"><span class="cn">III </span>Aaron and Rosie Winters</a> 25</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c6"><span class="cn">IV </span>John Searles and His Lake of Ooze</a> 30</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c7"><span class="cn">V </span>But Where Was God?</a> 35</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c8"><span class="cn">VI </span>Death Valley Geology</a> 39</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c9"><span class="cn">VII </span>Indians of the Area</a> 43</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c10"><span class="cn">VIII </span>Desert Gold. Too Many Fractions</a> 48</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c11"><span class="cn">IX </span>Romance Strikes the Parson</a> 53</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c12"><span class="cn">X </span>Greenwater&mdash;Last of the Boom Towns</a> 60</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c13"><span class="cn">XI </span>The Amargosa Country</a> 64</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c14"><span class="cn">XII </span>A Hovel That Ought To Be a Shrine</a> 82</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c15"><span class="cn">XIII </span>Sex in Death Valley Country</a> 87</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c16"><span class="cn">XIV </span>Shoshone Country. Resting Springs</a> 92</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c17"><span class="cn">XV </span>The Story of Charles Brown</a> 102</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c18"><span class="cn">XVI </span>Long Man, Short Man</a> 109</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c19"><span class="cn">XVII </span>Shorty Frank Harris</a> 113</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c20"><span class="cn">XVIII </span>A Million Dollar Poker Game</a> 125</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c21"><span class="cn">XIX </span>Death Valley Scotty</a> 130</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c22"><span class="cn">XX </span>Odd But Interesting Characters</a> 136</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c23"><span class="cn">XXI </span>Roads. Cracker Box Signs</a> 144</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c24"><span class="cn">XXII </span>Lost Mines. The Breyfogle and Others</a> 154</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c25"><span class="cn">XXIII </span>Panamint City. Genial Crooks</a> 164</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c26"><span class="cn">XXIV </span>Indian George. Legend of the Panamint</a> 171</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c27"><span class="cn">XXV </span>Ballarat. Ghost Town</a> 175</dt>
+<dt><a href="#c28">Index</a> 189</dt>
+</dl>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_9">9</div>
+<h2 id="c2"><span class="small">THIS BOOK</span></h2>
+<p>This book is a personal narrative of people and places in Panamint
+Valley, the Amargosa Desert, and the Big Sink at the bottom of America.
+Most of the places which excited a gold-crazed world in the early part
+of the century are now no more, or are going back to sage. Of the actors
+who made the history of the period, few remain.</p>
+<p>It was the writer&rsquo;s good fortune that many of these men were his
+friends. Some were or would become tycoons of mining or industry.
+Some would lucklessly follow jackasses all their lives, to find no gold
+but perhaps a finer treasure&mdash;a rainbow in the sky that would never fade.</p>
+<p>It is the romance, the comedy, the often stark tragedy these men
+left along the trail which you will find in the pages that follow.</p>
+<p>Necessarily the history of the region, often dull, is given first because
+it gives a clearer picture of the background and second, because
+that history is little known, being buried in the generally unread diaries
+of John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, Lt. Brewerton, Jedediah Smith, and
+the stories of early Mormon explorers.</p>
+<p>It is interesting to note that a map popular with adventurers of
+Fremont&rsquo;s time could list only six states west of the Mississippi River.
+These were Texas, Indian Territory, Missouri, Oregon, and Mexico&rsquo;s
+two possessions&mdash;New Mexico and Upper California. There was no
+Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, or either of the Dakotas.
+No Kansas. No Nebraska.</p>
+<p>Sources of material are given in the text and though careful research
+was made, it should be understood that the history of Death
+Valley country is argumentative and bold indeed is one who says,
+&ldquo;Here are the facts.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With something more than mere formality, the writer wishes to
+thank those mentioned below:</p>
+<p>My longtime friend, Senator Charles Brown of Shoshone who has
+often given valuable time to make available research material which
+otherwise would have been almost impossible to obtain. Of more value,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_10">10</span>
+have been his personal recollections of Greenwater, Goldfield, and
+Tonopah, in all of which places he had lived in their hectic days.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Charles Brown, daughter of the noted pioneer, Ralph Jacobus
+(Dad) Fairbanks and her sister, Mrs. Bettie Lisle, of Baker, California.
+The voluminous scrapbooks of both, including one of their mother,
+Celestia Abigail Fairbanks, all containing information of priceless value
+were always at my disposal while preparing the manuscript.</p>
+<p>Dad Fairbanks, innumerable times my host, was a walking encyclopedia
+of men and events.</p>
+<p>One depository of source material deserves special mention. Nailed
+to the wall of Shorty Harris&rsquo; Ballarat cabin was a box two feet wide,
+four feet long, with four shelves. The box served as a cupboard and its
+calico curtains operated on a drawstring. On the top shelf, Shorty would
+toss any letter, clipping, record of mine production, map, or bulletin that
+the mails had brought, visitors had given, or friends had sent. And there
+they gathered the dust of years.</p>
+<p>Wishing to locate the address of Peter B. Kyne, author of The Parson
+of Panamint, whose host Shorty had been, I removed these documents
+and discovered that the catch-all shelf was a veritable treasure of little-known
+facts about the Panamint of earlier days.</p>
+<p>There were maps, reports of geologic surveys, and bulletins now out
+of print; newspapers of the early years and scores of letters with valuable
+material bearing the names of men internationally known.</p>
+<p>It is with a sense of futility that I attempt to express my indebtedness
+to my wife, who with a patience I cannot comprehend, kept me searching
+for the facts whenever and wherever the facts were to be found;
+typing and re-typing the manuscript in its entirety many times to make
+it, if possible, a worthwhile book.</p>
+<p><span class="lr">Ontario, California, December 22, 1950</span></p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_11">11</div>
+<h2 id="c3"><span class="small">Chapter I</span>
+<br />A Foretaste of Things to Come</h2>
+<p>In the newspaper office where the writer worked, was a constant
+parade of adventurers. Talented press agents; promoters; moguls of
+mining and prospectors who, having struck it rich, now lived grandly
+in palatial homes, luxurious hotels or impressive clubs. In their wake,
+of course, was an engaging breed of liars, and an occasional adventuress
+who by luck or love had left a boom town crib to live thereafter &ldquo;in
+marble halls with vassals&rdquo; at her command. All brought arresting yarns
+of Death Valley.</p>
+<p>For 76 years this Big Sink at the bottom of America had been a
+land of mystery and romantic legend, but there had been little travel
+through it since the white man&rsquo;s first crossing. &ldquo;I would have starved
+to death on tourists&rsquo; trade,&rdquo; said the pioneer Ralph (Dad) Fairbanks.</p>
+<p>More than 3,000,000 people lived within a day&rsquo;s journey in 1925,
+but excepting a few, who lived in bordering villages and settlements,
+those who had actually been in Death Valley could be counted on one&rsquo;s
+fingers and toes. The reasons were practical. It was the hottest region
+in America, with few water holes and these far apart. There were no
+roads&mdash;only makeshift trails left by the wagons that had hauled borax
+in the Eighties. Now they were little more than twisting scars through
+brush, over dry washes and dunes, though listed on the maps as roads.
+For the novice it was a foolhardy gamble with death. &ldquo;There are easier
+ways of committing suicide,&rdquo; a seasoned desert man advised.</p>
+<p>I had been up and down the world more perhaps than the average
+person and this seemed to be a challenge to one with a vagabond&rsquo;s foot
+and a passion for remote places. So one day I set out for Death Valley.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_12">12</div>
+<p>At the last outpost of civilization, a two-cabin resort, the sign over
+a sand-blasted, false-fronted building stressed: &ldquo;Free Information. Cabins.
+Eats. Gas. Oil. Refreshments.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Needing all these items, I parked my car and walked into a foretaste
+of things-to-come. The owner, a big, genial fellow, was behind the
+counter using his teeth to remove the cork from a bottle labeled
+&ldquo;Bourbon&rdquo;&mdash;a task he deftly accomplished by twisting on the bottle
+instead of the cork. &ldquo;I want a cabin for the night,&rdquo; I told him, &ldquo;and when
+you have time, all the free information I can get.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve come to headquarters,&rdquo; he beamed as he set the bottle on
+the table, glanced at me, then at the liquor and added: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know
+your drinking sentiments but if you&rsquo;d like to wet your whistle, take one
+on the house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>While he was getting glasses from a cabinet behind the counter, a
+slender, wiry man with baked skin, coal-black eyes and hair came
+through a rear door, removed a knapsack strapped across his shoulders
+and set it in the farthest corner of the room. Two or three books rolled
+out and were replaced only after he had wiped them carefully with a
+red bandana kerchief. A sweat-stained khaki shirt and faded blue overalls
+did not affect an impression he gave of some outstanding quality. It may
+have been the air of self assurance, the calm of his keen eyes or the
+majesty of his stride as he crossed the floor.</p>
+<p>My host glanced at the newcomer and set another glass on the table,
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re in luck,&rdquo; he said to me. &ldquo;Here comes a man who can tell you
+anything you want to know about this country.&rdquo; A moment later the
+newcomer was introduced as &ldquo;Blackie.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whatever Blackie tells you is gospel. Knows every trail man or
+beast ever made in that hell-hole, from one end to the other. Ain&rsquo;t that
+right, Blackie?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Without answering, Blackie focused an eye on the bottle, picked it
+up, shook it, watched the beads a moment. &ldquo;Bourbon hell ... just
+plain tongue oil.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After the drink my host showed me to one of the cabins&mdash;a small,
+boxlike structure. Opening the door he waved me in. &ldquo;One fellow said
+he couldn&rsquo;t whip a cat in this cabin, but you haven&rsquo;t got a cat.&rdquo; He set
+my suitcase on a sagging bed, brought in a bucket of water, put a clean
+towel on the roller and wiped the dust from a water glass with two big
+fingers. &ldquo;When you get settled come down and loaf with us. Just call
+me Bill. Calico Bill, I&rsquo;m known as. Came up here from the Calico
+Mountains.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just one question,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you get lonesome in all this
+desolation?&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_13">13</div>
+<p>&ldquo;Lonesome? Mister, there&rsquo;s something going on every minute. You&rsquo;d
+be surprised. Like what happened this morning. Did you meet a truck
+on your way up, with a husky young driver and a girl in a skimpy dress?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;At a gas station a hundred miles back, and the girl
+was a breath-taker.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can say that again,&rdquo; Bill grinned. &ldquo;Prettiest gal I ever saw&mdash;bar
+none. She&rsquo;s just turned eighteen. Married to a fellow fifty-five if he&rsquo;s a
+day. He owns a truck and hauls for a mine near here at so much a load.
+Jealous sort. Won&rsquo;t let her out of his sight. You can&rsquo;t blame a young
+fellow for looking at a pretty girl. But this brute is so crazy jealous he
+took to locking her up in his cabin while he was at work. Fact is, she&rsquo;s
+a nice clean kid and if I&rsquo;d known about it, I&rsquo;d have chased him off. I
+reckon she was too ashamed to tell anybody.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course the young fellows found it out and just to worry him,
+two or three of &rsquo;em came over here to play a prank on him and a hell
+of a prank it was. They made a lot of tracks around his cabin doors and
+windows. He saw the tracks and figured she&rsquo;d been stepping out on him.
+So instead of locking her in as usual, he began to take her to work with
+him so he could keep his eyes on her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yesterday it happened. His truck broke down and this morning he
+left early to get parts, but he was smart enough to take her shoes with
+him. Then he nailed the doors and windows from the outside. Soon as
+he was out of hearing, somehow she busted out and came down to my
+store barefooted and asked me if I knew of any way she could get a ride
+out. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m leaving, if I have to walk,&rsquo; she says. Then she told me her story.
+He&rsquo;d bought her back in Oklahoma for $500. She is one of ten children.
+Her folks didn&rsquo;t have enough to feed &rsquo;em all. This old guy, who lived in
+their neighborhood and had money, talked her parents into the deal. &lsquo;I
+just couldn&rsquo;t see my little sisters go hungry,&rsquo; she said, and like a fool she
+married him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I reckon the Lord was with her. We see about three outside trucks
+a year around here, but I&rsquo;d no sooner fixed her up with a pair of shoes
+before one pulls up for gas. I asked the driver if he&rsquo;d give her a ride to
+Barstow. He took just one look. &lsquo;I sure will,&rsquo; he says and off they went.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You see what I mean,&rdquo; Bill said, concluding his story. &ldquo;Things like
+that. Of course we don&rsquo;t watch no parades but we also don&rsquo;t get pushed
+around and run over and tromped on.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the last twelve words Bill expressed what hundreds have failed to
+explain in pages of flowered phrase&mdash;the appeal of the desert.</p>
+<p>Soon I was back at the store. Bill and Blackie, over a new bottle
+were swapping memories of noted desert characters who had highlighted
+the towns and camps from Tonopah to the last hell-roarer. The
+<span class="pb" id="Page_14">14</span>
+great, the humble, the odd and eccentric. Through their conversation
+ran such names as Fireball Fan; Mike Lane; Mother Featherlegs; Shorty
+Harris; Tiger Lil; Hungry Hattie; Cranky Casey; Johnny-Behind-the-Gun;
+Dad Fairbanks; Fraction Jack Stewart; the Indian, Hungry Bill;
+and innumerable Slims and Shortys featured in yarns of the wasteland.</p>
+<p>Blackie&rsquo;s chief interest in life, Bill told me was books. &ldquo;About all
+he does is read. Doesn&rsquo;t have to work. Of course, like everybody in this
+country, he&rsquo;s always going to find $2,000,000,000 this week or next.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Though only incidental, history was brought into their conversation
+when Bill, giving me &ldquo;free information&rdquo; as his sign announced, told me
+I would be able to see the place where Manly crossed the Panamint.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Manly never knew where he crossed,&rdquo; Blackie said. &ldquo;He tried to tell
+about it 40 years afterward and all he did was to start an argument that&rsquo;s
+going on yet. That&rsquo;s why I say you can write the known facts about
+Death Valley history on a postage stamp with the end of your thumb.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The tongue oil loosened Calico Bill&rsquo;s story of Indian George and his
+trained mountain sheep. &ldquo;George had the right idea about gold. Find it,
+then take it out as needed. One time an artist came to George&rsquo;s ranch and
+made a picture of the ram. When he had finished it he stepped behind
+his easel and was watching George eat a raw gopher snake when the
+goat came up. Rams are jealous and mistaking the picture for a rival, he
+charged like a thunderbolt.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It didn&rsquo;t hurt the picture, but knocked the painter and George
+through both walls of George&rsquo;s shanty. George picked himself up. &lsquo;Heap
+good picture. Me want.&rsquo; The fellow gave it to him and for months George
+would tease that goat with the picture. One day he left it on a boulder
+while he went for his horse. When he got back, the boulder was split
+wide open and the picture was on top of a tree 50 feet away.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Somebody told George about a steer in the Chicago packing house
+which led other steers to the slaughter pen and it gave George an idea.
+One day I found him and his goat in a Panamint canyon and asked why
+he brought the goat along. &lsquo;Me broke. Need gold.&rsquo; Since he didn&rsquo;t have
+pick, shovel, or dynamite, I asked how he expected to get gold.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Pick, shovel heap work,&rsquo; George said. &lsquo;Dynamite maybe kill. Sheep
+better. Me show you.&rsquo; He told me to move to a safe place and after
+scattering some grain around for the goat, George scaled the boulder. It
+was big as a house. A moment later I saw him unroll the picture and with
+strings attached, let it rest on one corner of the big rock. Then holding
+the strings, he disappeared into his blind higher up. Suddenly he made a
+hissing noise. The Big Horn stiffened, saw the picture, lowered his head
+and never in my life have I seen such a crash. Dust filled the air and
+fragments fell for 10 minutes. When I went over George was gathering
+<span class="pb" id="Page_15">15</span>
+nuggets big as goose eggs. &lsquo;White man heap dam&rsquo; fool,&rsquo; he grunted.
+&lsquo;Wants too much gold all same time. Maybe lose. Maybe somebody steal.
+No can steal boulder.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The &ldquo;tongue oil&rdquo; had been disposed of when Blackie suggested that
+we step over to his place, a short distance around the point of a hill.
+&ldquo;Plenty more there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Bill had told me that as a penniless youngster Blackie had walked
+up Odessa Canyon one afternoon. Within three days he was rated as a
+millionaire. Within three months he was broke again. Later Blackie told
+me, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s somebody&rsquo;s dream. I got about $200,000 and decided I belonged
+up in the Big Banker group. They welcomed me and skinned me
+out of my money in no time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was Blackie who proved to my satisfaction that money has only a
+minor relation to happiness. His house was part dobe, part white tufa
+blocks. On his table was a student&rsquo;s lamp, a pipe, and can of tobacco. A
+book held open by a hand axe. Other books were shelved along the wall.
+He had an incongruous walnut cabinet with leaded glass doors. Inside, a
+well-filled decanter and a dozen whiskey glasses and a pleasant aroma of
+bourbon came from a keg covered with a gunny sack and set on a stool
+in the corner.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This country&rsquo;s hard on the throat,&rdquo; he explained.</p>
+<p>Blackie&rsquo;s kingdom seemed to have extended from the morning star
+to the setting sun. He had been in the Yukon, in New Zealand, South
+Africa, and the Argentine. Gold, hemp, sugar, and ships had tossed
+fortunes at him which were promptly lost or spent.</p>
+<p>For a man who had found compensation for such luck, there is no
+defeat. Certainly his philosophy seemed to meet his needs and that is the
+function of philosophy.</p>
+<p>It was cool in the late evening and he made a fire, chucked one end
+of an eight-foot log into the stove and put a chair under the protruding
+end. Bill asked why he didn&rsquo;t cut the log. &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; Blackie said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re
+one of 100 million reasons why this country is misgoverned. Why should
+I sweat over that log when a fire will do the job?... That book?
+Just some fellow&rsquo;s plan for a perfect world. I hope I&rsquo;ll not be around
+when they have it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The town of Calico? It was a live one. When John McBryde and
+Lowery Silver discovered the white metal there, a lot of us desert rats got
+in the big money. In the first seven years of the Eighties it was bonanza
+and in the eighth the town was dead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But the stories of fortunes made in Mule and Odessa Canyons were
+of less importance to him than a habit of the town judge. &ldquo;Chewed
+tobacco all the time and swallowed the juice, &lsquo;If a fellow&rsquo;s guts can&rsquo;t
+<span class="pb" id="Page_16">16</span>
+stand it,&rsquo; he would say, &lsquo;he ought to quit,&rsquo; and he&rsquo;d clap a fine on anybody
+who spat in his court.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never knew Jack Dent, did you? Englishman. Now there was a
+drinking man. Said his only ambition was to die drunk. One pay day he
+got so cockeyed he couldn&rsquo;t stand, so his pals laid him on a pool table
+and went on with their drinking. Every time they ordered, Jack hollered
+for his and somebody would take it over and pour it down him. &lsquo;Keep
+&rsquo;em comin&rsquo;,&rsquo; he says. &lsquo;If I doze off, just pry my jaws open and pour it
+down.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The boys took him at his word. Every time they drank, they took a
+drink to Jack. When the last round came they took Jack a big one. They
+tried to pry his lips open but the lips didn&rsquo;t give. Jack Dent&rsquo;s funeral was
+the biggest ever held in the town.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bill was telling you I made a million there, and every now and then
+I hear of somebody telling somebody else I made a million in Africa.
+And another in the Yukon. The truth is, what little I&rsquo;ve got came out of
+a hole in a whiskey barrel instead of a mine shaft.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A few years back a strike was made down in the Avawatz that
+started a baby gold rush. I joined it. A fellow named Gypsum came in
+with a barrel of whiskey, thinking there&rsquo;d be a town, but it didn&rsquo;t turn
+out that way. Gypsum had no trouble disposing of his liquor and stayed
+around to do a little prospecting. One day when I was starting for Johannesburg,
+he asked me to deliver a message to a bartender there.
+Gypsum had a meat cleaver in his hand and was sharpening it on a
+butcher&rsquo;s steel to cut up a mountain sheep he&rsquo;d killed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Just ask for Klondike and tell him to send my stuff. He&rsquo;ll understand.
+Tell him if he doesn&rsquo;t send it, I&rsquo;m coming after it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know at the time that Gypsum had killed three men in
+honest combat and that one of them had been dispatched with a meat
+cleaver.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I delivered the message verbatim. Klondike looked a bit worried.
+&lsquo;What&rsquo;s Gypsum doing?&rsquo; he asked. &lsquo;When I left,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;he was sharpening
+a meat cleaver.&rsquo; Klondike turned white. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll have it ready before
+you go.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When I called later, he told me he&rsquo;d put Gypsum&rsquo;s stuff in the back
+of my car. When I got back to camp and Gypsum came to my tent to
+ask about it, I told him to get it out of the car, which was parked a few
+feet away. Gypsum went for it and in a moment I heard him cussing. I
+looked out and he was trying to shoulder a heavy sack. Before I could
+get out to help him, the sack got away from him and burst at his feet.
+The ground was covered with nickles, dimes, quarters, halves. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s
+another sack.&rsquo; Gypsum said. &lsquo;The son of a bitch has sent me $2500 in
+chicken feed. Just for spite.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_17">17</div>
+<p>&ldquo;Because it was a nuisance, Gypsum loaned it to the fellows about,
+all of whom were his friends. They didn&rsquo;t want it but took it just to accommodate
+Gypsum. There was nothing to spend it for. Somebody started
+a poker game and I let &rsquo;em use my tent because it was the largest. I
+rigged up a table by sawing Gypsum&rsquo;s whiskey barrel in two and nailing
+planks over the open end. Every night after supper they started playing.
+I furnished light and likker and usually I set out grub. It didn&rsquo;t cost much
+but somebody suggested that in order to reimburse me, two bits should
+be taken out of every jackpot. A hole was slit in the top. It was a fast
+game and the stakes high. It ran for weeks every evening and the Saturday
+night session ended Monday morning.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course some were soon broke and they began to borrow from
+one another. Finally everybody was broke and all the money was in my
+kitty. I took the top off the barrel and loaned it to the players, taking
+I.O.U.&rsquo;s, I had to take the top off a dozen times and when it was finally
+decided there was no pay dirt in the Avawatz, I had a sack full of I.O.U.&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Once I tried to figure out how many times that $2500 was loaned,
+but I gave up. I learned though, why these bankers pick up a pencil
+and start figuring the minute you start talking. They are on the right end
+of the pencil.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Early the next morning while Bill was servicing my car for the trip
+ahead, with some tactful mention of handy gadgets he had for sale, we
+noticed Blackie coming with a man who ran largely to whiskers. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s
+old Cloudburst Pete,&rdquo; Bill told me. &ldquo;Another old timer who has shuffled
+all over this country.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did he get that moniker?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One time Pete came in here and was telling us fellows about a narrow
+escape he had from a cloudburst over in the Panamint. Pete said the
+cloud was just above him and about to burst and would have filled the
+canyon with a wall of water 90 feet high. A city fellow who had stopped
+for gas, asked Pete how come he didn&rsquo;t get drowned. Pete took a notion
+the fellow was trying to razz him. &lsquo;Well, Mister, if you must know, I
+lassoed the cloud, ground-hitched it and let it bust....&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After greeting Pete, Bill asked if he&rsquo;d been walking all night.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Naw,&rdquo; Pete said. &ldquo;Started around 11 o&rsquo;clock, I reckon. Not so bad
+before sunup. Be hell going back. But I didn&rsquo;t come here to growl about
+the weather. I want some powder so I can get started. Found color yesterday.
+Looks like I&rsquo;m in the big money.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fine,&rdquo; Bill said. &ldquo;I heard you&rsquo;ve been laid up.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I broke a leg awhile back. Fell in a mine shaft. Didn&rsquo;t amount
+to much.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know about that, but didn&rsquo;t you get hurt in a blast since then?&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_18">18</div>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh that&mdash;yeh. Got blowed out of a 20-foot hole. Three-four ribs
+busted, the doc said. Come to think of it, believe he mentioned a fractured
+collar bone. Wasn&rsquo;t half as bad as last week.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good Lord ... what happened last week?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That crazy Cyclone Thompson. You know him ... he pulled a
+stope gate and let five-six tons of muck down on me. Nobody knew it&mdash;not
+even Cyclone. Wore my fingers to the bone scratching out. Look at
+these hands....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Pete held up his mutilated hands. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll heal but bigod&mdash;that pair
+of brand new double-stitched overalls won&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Bill chuckled, &ldquo;you know where the powder is. Go in and
+get it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Bill and Blackie remained to see me off, each with a friendly word
+of advice. &ldquo;Just follow the wheel tracks,&rdquo; Bill said, as I climbed into
+my car and Blackie added: &ldquo;Keep your eyes peeled for the cracker box
+signs along the edge of the road. You&rsquo;ll see &rsquo;em nailed to a stake and
+stuck in the ground.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A moment later I was headed into a silence broken only by the whip
+of sage against the car. Ahead was the glimmer of a dry lake and in the
+distance a great mass of jumbled mountains that notched the pale skies.
+Beyond&mdash;what?</p>
+<p>I never dreamed then that for twenty-five years I would be poking
+around in those deceiving hills.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_19">19</div>
+<h2 id="c4"><span class="small">Chapter II</span>
+<br />What Caused Death Valley?</h2>
+<p>When you travel through the desolation of Death Valley along the
+Funeral Range, you may find it difficult to believe that several thousand
+feet above the top of your car was once a cool, inviting land with rivers
+and forests and lakes, and that hundreds of feet below you are the dry
+beds of seas that washed its shores.</p>
+<p>Scientists assert that all life&mdash;both animal and vegetable began in
+these buried seas&mdash;probably two and one-half billion years ago.</p>
+<p>It is certain that no life could have existed on the thin crust of earth
+covered as it was with deadly gases. Therefore, your remotest ancestors
+must have been sea creatures until they crawled out or were washed
+ashore in one of Nature&rsquo;s convulsions to become land dwellers.</p>
+<p>Since sea water contains more gold than has ever been found on the
+earth, it may be said that man on his way up from the lowest form of
+life was born in a solution of gold.</p>
+<p>That he survived, is due to two urges&mdash;the sex urge and the urge
+for food. Without either all life would cease.</p>
+<p><span class="sc">Note.</span> The author&rsquo;s book, <i>Life&rsquo;s Grand Stairway</i> soon to be published,
+contains a fast moving, factual story of man and his eternal quest
+for gold from the beginning of recorded time.</p>
+<p>Camping one night at Mesquite Spring, I heard a prospector cursing
+his burro. It wasn&rsquo;t a casual cursing, but a classic revelation of one who
+knew burros&mdash;the soul of them, from inquisitive eyes to deadly heels. A
+moment later he was feeding lumps of sugar to the beast and the feud
+ended on a pleasant note.</p>
+<p>We were sitting around the camp fire later when the prospector
+showed me a piece of quartz that glittered at twenty feet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you have much?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_20">20</div>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got more than Carter had oats, and I&rsquo;m pulling out at daylight.
+Me and Thieving Jack.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; I said aimlessly, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll retire to a life of luxury; have a
+palace, a housekeeper, and a French chef.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nope. Chinaman cook. Friend of mine struck it rich. He had a
+female cook. After that he couldn&rsquo;t call his soul his own. Me? First
+money I spend goes for pie. Never had my fill of pie. Next&mdash;&rdquo; He paused
+and looked affectionately at Thieving Jack. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to buy a ranch
+over at Lone Pine with a stream running smack through the middle.
+Snow water. I aim to build a fence head high all around it and pension
+that burro off. As for me&mdash;no mansion. Just a cottage with a screen
+porch all around. I&rsquo;m sick of horseflies and mosquitoes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was off at sunrise and my thought was that God went with him
+and Thieving Jack.</p>
+<p>If you encounter scorching heat you will find little comfort in the
+fact that icebergs once floated in those ancient seas. It is almost certain
+that you will be curious about the disorderly jumble of gutted hills; the
+colorful canyons and strange formations and ask yourself what caused it.</p>
+<p>The answer is found on Black Mountain in the Funeral Range. Here
+occurred a convulsion of nature without any known parallel and the
+tops of nearby mountains became the bottom of America&mdash;an upheaval
+so violent that the oldest rocks were squeezed under pressure from the
+nethermost stratum of the earth to lie alongside the youngest on the
+surface.</p>
+<p>The seas and the fish vanished. The forests were buried. The prehistoric
+animals, the dinosaurs and elephants were trapped.</p>
+<p>The result, after undetermined ages, is today&rsquo;s Death Valley. A
+shorter explanation was that of my companion on my first trip to Black
+Mountain&mdash;a noted desert character&mdash;Jackass Slim. There we found a
+scientist who wished to enlighten us. To his conversation sprinkled with
+such words as Paleozoic and pre-Cambrian Slim listened raptly for an
+hour. Then the learned man asked Slim if he had made it plain.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; Slim said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been trying to say hell broke loose.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Indians, who saw Death Valley first, called it &ldquo;Tomesha,&rdquo; which
+means Ground Afire, and warned adventurers, explorers, and trappers
+that it was a vast sunken region, intolerant of life.</p>
+<p>The first white Americans known to have seen it, belonged to the
+party of explorers led by John C. Fremont and guided by Kit Carson.</p>
+<p>Death Valley ends on the south in the narrow opening between the
+terminus of the Panamint Range and that of the Black Mountains.
+Through this opening, though unaware of it, Fremont saw the dry stream
+bed of the Amargosa River, on April 27, 1844, flowing north and in the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_21">21</span>
+distance &ldquo;a high, snowy mountain.&rdquo; This mountain was Telescope Peak,
+11,045 feet high.</p>
+<p>Nearly six years later, impatient Forty Niners enroute to California
+gold fields, having heard that the shortest way was through this forbidden
+sink, demanded that their guide take them across it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will go to hell with you, but not through Death Valley,&rdquo; said the
+wise Mormon guide, Captain Jefferson Hunt.</p>
+<p>Scoffing Hunt&rsquo;s warning, the Bennett-Arcane party deserted and
+with the Jayhawkers became the first white Americans to cross Death
+Valley. The suffering of the deserters, widely advertised, gave the region
+an evil reputation that kept it practically untraveled, unexplored, and
+accursed for the next 75 years, or until Charles Brown of Shoshone succeeded
+in having wheel tracks replaced with roads.</p>
+<p>With the opening of the Eichbaum toll road from Lone Pine to
+Stovepipe Wells in 1926-7 a trickle of tourists began, but actually as
+late as 1932, Death Valley had fewer visitors than the Congo. A few
+prospectors, a few daring adventurers and a few ranchers had found in
+the areas adjoining, something in the great Wide Open that answered
+man&rsquo;s inherent craving for freedom and peace. &ldquo;The hills that shut this
+valley in,&rdquo; explained the old timer, &ldquo;also shut out the mess we left
+behind.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Tales of treasure came in the wake of the Forty Niners but it was
+not until 1860 that the first prospecting party was organized by Dr.
+Darwin French at Oroville, California. In the fall of that year he set out
+to find the Lost Gunsight mine, the story of which is told in another
+chapter.</p>
+<p>On this trip Dr. French discovered and gave his name to Darwin
+Falls and Darwin Wash in the Panamint range. He named Bennett&rsquo;s
+Well on the floor of Death Valley to honor Asa (or Asabel) Bennett,
+a member of the Bennett-Arcane party. He gave the name of another
+member of that party to Towne&rsquo;s Pass, now a thrilling route into Death
+Valley but then a breath-taking challenge to death.</p>
+<p>He named Furnace Creek after finding there a crude furnace for
+reducing ore. He also named Panamint Valley and Panamint Range, but
+neither the origin of the word Panamint nor its significance is known.
+Indians found there said their tribe was called Panamint, but those
+around there are Shoshones and Piutes. (See <a href="#piute">note</a> at end of this chapter.)</p>
+<p>Also in 1860 William Lewis Manly who with John Rogers, a brave
+and husky Tennessean had rescued the survivors of the Bennett-Arcane
+party, returned to the valley he had named, to search for the Gunsight.
+Manly found nothing and reported later he was deserted by his companions
+and escaped death only when rescued by a wandering Indian.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_22">22</div>
+<p>In 1861 Lt. Ives on a surveying mission explored a part of the valley
+in connection with the California Boundary Commission. He used for
+pack animals some of the camels which had been provided by Jefferson
+Davis, Secretary of War, for transporting supplies across the western
+deserts.</p>
+<p>In 1861 Dr. S. G. George, who had been a member of French&rsquo;s
+party, organized one of his own and for the same reason&mdash;to find the
+Lost Gunsight. He made several locations of silver and gold, explored
+a portion of the Panamint Range. The first man ever to scale Telescope
+Peak was a member of the George party. He was W. T. Henderson, who
+had also been with Dr. French. Henderson named the mountain &ldquo;because,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;I could see for 200 miles in all directions as clearly as
+through a telescope.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The most enduring accomplishment of the party was to bring back
+a name for the mountain range east of what is now known as Owens
+Valley, named for one of Fremont&rsquo;s party of explorers. From an Indian
+chief they learned this range was called Inyo and meant &ldquo;the home of a
+Great Spirit.&rdquo; Ultimately the name was given to the county in the southeast
+corner of which is Death Valley.</p>
+<p>Tragedy dogged all the early expeditions. July 21, 1871 the Wheeler
+expedition left Independence to explore Death Valley. This party of 60
+included geologists, botanists, naturalists, and soldiers. One detachment
+was under command of Lt. George Wheeler. Lt. Lyle led the other.
+Lyle&rsquo;s detachment was guided by C. F. R. Hahn and the third day out
+Hahn was sent ahead to locate water. John Koehler, a naturalist of the
+party is alleged to have said that he would kill Hahn if he didn&rsquo;t find
+water. Failing to return Hahn was abandoned to his fate and he was
+never seen again.</p>
+<p>William Eagan, guide of Wheeler&rsquo;s party was sent to Rose Springs
+for water. He also failed to return. What became of him is not known
+and the army officers were justly denounced for callous indifference. On
+the desert, inexcusable desertion of a companion brands the deserter as
+an outcast and has often resulted in his lynching.</p>
+<p>It is interesting to note that apart from a Government Land Survey
+in 1856, which proved to be utterly worthless, there is no authentic
+record of the white man in Death Valley between 1849 and 1860. However,
+during this decade the canyons on the west side of the Panamint
+harbored numerous renegades who had held up a Wells-Fargo stage or
+slit a miner&rsquo;s throat for his poke of gold. Some were absorbed into the
+life of the wasteland when the discovery of silver in Surprise Canyon
+brought a hectic mob of adventurers to create hell-roaring Panamint
+City.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_23">23</div>
+<p>When, in the middle Seventies Nevada silver kings, John P. Jones
+and Wm. R. Stewart, who were Fortune&rsquo;s children on the Comstock, decided
+$2,000,000 was enough to lose at Panamint City, many of the outlaws
+wandered over the mountain and down the canyon to cross Death
+Valley and settle wherever they thought they could survive on the eastern
+approaches.</p>
+<p>Soon Ash Meadows, Furnace Creek Ranch, Stump Springs, the
+Manse Ranch, Resting Springs, and Pahrump Ranch became landmarks.</p>
+<p>The first white man known to have settled in Death Valley was a
+person of some cunning and no conscience, known as Bellerin&rsquo; Teck,
+Bellowing Tex Bennett, and Bellowin&rsquo; Teck. He settled at Furnace Creek
+in 1870 and erected a shanty alongside the water where the Bennett-Arcane
+party had camped when driven from Ash Meadows by Indians
+whose gardens they had raided and whose squaws they had abused, according
+to a legend of the Indians and referred to with scant attention
+to details, by Manly. (Panamint Tom, famed Indian of the region, in
+speaking of this raid by the whites, told me that the head man of his
+tribe sent runners to Ash Meadows for reinforcements and that the recruits
+were marched in circles around boulders and in and out of ravines
+to give the impression of superior strength. This strategy deceived the
+whites, who then went on their way.)</p>
+<p>Teck claimed title to all the country in sight. Little is known of his
+past, but whites later understood that he chose the forbidding region to
+outsmart a sheriff. He brought water through an open ditch from its
+source in the nearby foothills and grew alfalfa and grain. He named his
+place Greenland Ranch and it was the beginning of the present Furnace
+Creek Ranch.</p>
+<p>There is a tradition that Teck supplemented his meager earnings
+from the ranch by selling half interests to wayfarers, subsequently driving
+them off.</p>
+<p>There remains a record of one such victim&mdash;a Mormon adventurer
+named Jackson. In part payment Teck took a pair of oxen, Jackson&rsquo;s
+money and his only weapon, a rifle. Shortly Teck began to show signs of
+dissatisfaction. His temper flared more frequently and Jackson became
+increasingly alarmed. When finally Teck came bellowing from his cabin,
+brandishing his gun, Jackson did the right thing at the right moment.
+He fled, glad to escape with his life.</p>
+<p>This became the pattern for the next wayfarer and the next. Teck
+always craftily demanded their weapons in the trade, but knowing that
+sooner or later some would take their troubles to a sheriff or return for
+revenge, Teck sold the ranch, left the country and no trace of his destiny
+remains.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_24">24</div>
+<p>Before Aaron and Rosie Winters or Borax Smith ever saw Death
+Valley, one who was to attain fame greater than either listed more than
+2000 different plants that grew in the area.</p>
+<p>Notwithstanding this important contribution to knowledge of the
+valley&rsquo;s flora, only one or two historians have mentioned his name, and
+these in books or periodicals long out of print.</p>
+<p>Two decades later he was to become famous as Brigadier General
+Frederick Funston of the Spanish-American War&mdash;the only major war in
+America&rsquo;s history fought by an army which was composed entirely of
+volunteers without a single draftee.</p>
+<p>Of interest to this writer is the fact that he was my brigade commander
+and a soldier from the boots up. Not five feet tall, he was every
+inch a fighting man. I served with him while he captured Emilio Aguinaldo,
+famous <i>Filipino Insurrecto</i>.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_25">25</div>
+<h2 id="c5"><span class="small">Chapter III</span>
+<br />Aaron and Rosie Winters</h2>
+<p>While Bellerin&rsquo; Teck was selling half interests in the spectacular hills
+to the unwary, he actually walked over a treasure of more millions than
+his wildest dreams had conjured.</p>
+<p>Teck&rsquo;s nearest neighbor lived at Ash Meadows about 60 miles east
+of the valley.</p>
+<p>Ash Meadows is a flat desert area in Nevada along the California
+border. With several water holes, subterranean streams, and abundant
+wild grass it was a resting place for early emigrants and a hole-in for
+prospectors. It was also an ideal refuge for gentlemen who liked its
+distance from sheriffs and the ease with which approaching horsemen
+could be seen from nearby hills.</p>
+<p>Lacking was woman. The male needed the female but there wasn&rsquo;t
+a white woman in the country. So he took what the market afforded&mdash;a
+squaw and not infrequently two or three. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s my son all right,&rdquo; a
+patriarch once informed me, &ldquo;but it&rsquo;s been so long I don&rsquo;t exactly
+recollect which of them squaws was his mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Usually the wife was bought. Sometimes for a trinket. Often a
+horse. Among the trappers who first blazed the trails to the West, 30
+beaver skins were considered a fair price for an able bodied squaw. She
+was capable in rendering domestic service and loyal in love. Too often
+the consort&rsquo;s fidelity was transient.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For 20 years,&rdquo; said the noted trapper, Killbuck, &ldquo;I packed a squaw
+along&mdash;not one, but a many. First I had a Blackfoot&mdash;the darndest slut
+as ever cried for fo-farrow. I lodge-poled her on Coulter&rsquo;s Creek ... as
+good as four packs of beaver I gave for old Bull-tail&rsquo;s daughter. He was
+the head chief of the Ricaree. Thar wan&rsquo;t enough scarlet cloth nor beads
+... in Sublette&rsquo;s packs for her ... I sold her to Cross-Eagle for
+one of Jake Hawkins&rsquo; guns.... Then I tried the Sioux, the Shian
+<span class="pb" id="Page_26">26</span>
+(Cheyenne) and a Digger from the other side, who made the best moccasins
+as ever I wore.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So Aaron Winters chose his mate from the available supply and
+with Rosie, part Mexican and Indian, part Spanish, he settled in Ash
+Meadows in a dugout. In front and adjoining had been added a shack,
+part wood, part stone. The floors were dirt. Rosie dragged in posts, poles,
+and brush and made a shed. Aaron found time between hunting and
+trapping to add a room of unmortared stone. At times there was no
+money, but pi&ntilde;on nuts grew in the mountains, desert tea and squaw
+cabbage were handy and the beans of mesquite could be ground into
+flour.</p>
+<p>Rosie, to whom one must yield admiration, was not the first woman
+in Winters&rsquo; life. &ldquo;He liked his women,&rdquo; Ed Stiles recalled, &ldquo;and changed
+&rsquo;em often.&rdquo; But to Rosie, Aaron Winters was always devoted. Her material
+reward was little but all who knew her praised her beauty and her
+virtues.</p>
+<p>One day when dusk was gathering there was a rap on the sagging
+slab door and Rosie Winters opened it on an angel unawares. The
+Winters invited the stranger in, shared their meager meal. After supper
+they sat up later than usual, listening to the story of the stranger&rsquo;s travels.
+He was looking for borax, he told them. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a white stuff....&rdquo; At
+this time, only two or three unimportant deposits of borax were known to
+exist in America and the average prospector knew nothing about it.</p>
+<p>The first borax was mined in Tibet. There in the form of tincal it
+was loaded on the backs of sheep, transported across the Himalayas and
+shipped to London. It was so rare that it was sold by the ounce. Later the
+more intelligent of the western prospectors began to learn that borax
+was something to keep in mind.</p>
+<p>To Aaron Winters it was just something bought in a drug store, but
+Rosie was interested in the &ldquo;white stuff.&rdquo; She wanted to know how one
+could tell when the white stuff was borax. Patiently the guest explained
+how to make the tests: &ldquo;Under the torch it will burn green....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Finally Rosie made a bed for the wayfarer in the lean-to and long
+after he blew out his candle Rosie Winters lay awake, wondering about
+some white stuff she&rsquo;d seen scattered over a flat down in the hellish heat
+of Death Valley. She remembered that it whitened the crust of a big
+area, stuck to her shoes and clothes and got in her hair when the wind
+lifted the silt.</p>
+<p>The next morning Rosie and Aaron bade the guest good luck and
+goodbye and he went into the horizon without even leaving his name.
+Then Rosie turned to Aaron: &ldquo;Maybe,&rdquo; she said ... &ldquo;maybe that
+<span class="pb" id="Page_27">27</span>
+white stuff we see that time below Furnace Creek&mdash;maybe that is borax.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Might be,&rdquo; Aaron answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t we go see?&rdquo; Rosie asked. &ldquo;Maybe some Big Horn
+sheep&mdash;&rdquo; Rosie knew her man and Aaron Winters got his rifle and
+Rosie packed the sow-belly and beans.</p>
+<p>It was a long, gruelling trip down into the valley under a Death
+Valley sun but hope sustained them. They made their camp at Furnace
+Creek, then Rosie led Aaron over the flats she remembered. She scooped
+up some of the white stuff that looked like cotton balls while Aaron
+prepared for the test. Then the brief, uncertain moment when the white
+stuff touched the flame. Tensely they watched, Aaron grimly curious
+rather than hopeful; Rosie with pounding heart and lips whispering a
+prayer.</p>
+<p>Then, miracle of miracles&mdash;the green flame. They looked excitedly
+into each other&rsquo;s eyes, each unable to believe. In that moment, Rosie,
+always devout, lifted her eyes to heaven and thanked her God. Neither
+had any idea of the worth of their find. Vaguely they knew it meant
+spending money. A new what-not for Rosie&rsquo;s mantel. Perhaps pine
+boards to cover the hovel&rsquo;s dirt floor; maybe a few pieces of golden oak
+furniture; a rifle with greater range than Aaron&rsquo;s old one; silk or satin
+to make a dress for Rosie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Writers have had to draw on their imagination for what happened,&rdquo;
+a descendant of the Winters once told me. &ldquo;They say Uncle Aaron
+exclaimed, &lsquo;Rosie, she burns green!&rsquo; or &lsquo;Rosie, we&rsquo;re rich!&rsquo; but Aunt
+Rosie said they were so excited they couldn&rsquo;t remember, but she knew
+what they did! They went over to the ditch that Bellerin&rsquo; Teck had dug
+to water the ranch and in its warm water soaked their bunioned feet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Returning to Ash Meadows they faced the problem of what to do
+with the &ldquo;white stuff.&rdquo; Unlike gold, it couldn&rsquo;t be sold on sight, because
+it was a new industry, and little was known about its handling. Finally
+Aaron learned that a rich merchant in San Francisco, named Coleman
+was interested in borax in a small way and lost no time in sending
+samples to Coleman.</p>
+<p>W. T. Coleman was a Kentucky aristocrat who had come to California
+during the gold rush and attained both fortune and the affection
+of the people of the state. He had been chosen leader of the famed
+Vigilantes, who had rescued San Francisco from a gang of the lawless
+as tough as the world ever saw.</p>
+<p>Actually Coleman&rsquo;s interest in borax was a minor incident in the
+handling of his large fortune and his passionate devotion to the development
+of his adopted state. For that reason alone, Coleman had become
+<span class="pb" id="Page_28">28</span>
+interested in the small deposits of borax discovered by Francis Smith,
+first at Columbus Marsh.</p>
+<p>Smith had been a prospector before coming to California, wandering
+all over western country, looking for gold and silver. He was one of
+those who had heard that borax was worth keeping in mind.</p>
+<p>Reaching Nevada and needing a grubstake, he began to cut wood
+to supply mines around Columbus, Aurora, and Candelaria. On Teel&rsquo;s
+Marsh he found a large growth of mesquite, built a shack and claimed
+all the wood and the site as his own. Upon a portion of it, some Mexicans
+had cut and corded some of the wood and Smith refused to let them haul
+it off. They left grudgingly and with threats to return. The Mexicans, of
+course, had as much right to the wood as Smith.</p>
+<p>Sensing trouble and having no weapons at his camp, he went twelve
+miles to borrow a rifle. But there were no cartridges and he had to ride
+sixty miles over the mountains to Aurora where he found only four. Returning
+to his shack, he found the Mexicans had also returned with
+reinforcements. Twenty-four were now at work and their mood was
+murderous. Smith had a companion whose courage he didn&rsquo;t trust and
+ordered him to go out in the brush and keep out of the way.</p>
+<p>The Mexicans told Smith they were going to take the wood. Smith
+warned that he would kill the first man who touched the pile. With
+only four cartridges to kill 20 men, it was obviously a bluff. One of the
+Mexicans went to the pile and picked up a stick. Smith put his rifle to his
+shoulder and ordered the fellow to drop it. Unafraid and still holding the
+stick the Mexican said: &ldquo;You may kill me, but my friends will kill you.
+Put your rifle down and we will talk it over.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They had cut additional wood during his absence and demanded
+that they be permitted to take all the wood they had cut. Smith consented
+and when the Mexicans had gone he staked out the marsh as a mining
+claim&mdash;which led to the connection with Coleman.</p>
+<p>Upon receipt of Winters&rsquo; letter, Coleman forwarded it to Smith and
+asked him to investigate the Winters claim. Smith&rsquo;s report was enthusiastic.
+Coleman then sent two capable men, William Robertson and
+Rudolph Neuenschwander to look over the Winters discovery, with
+credentials to buy. Again Rosie and Aaron Winters heard the flutter of
+angel wings at the hovel door. This time the angels left $20,000. Rarely
+in this world has buyer bought so much for so little, but to Aaron and
+Rosie Winters it was all the money in the world.</p>
+<p>Despite the troubles of operating in a place so remote from market
+and with problems of a product about which too little was known, borax
+was soon adding $100,000 a year to Coleman&rsquo;s already fabulous fortune.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_29">29</div>
+<p>Francis M. (Borax) Smith was put in charge of operations under
+the firm name of Coleman and Smith.</p>
+<p>Freed from the sordid squalor of the Ash Meadows hovel, the
+Winters bought the Pahrump Ranch, a landmark of Pahrump Valley,
+and settled down to watch the world go by.</p>
+<p>Thus began the Pacific Coast Borax Company, one of the world&rsquo;s
+outstanding corporations. Later Smith was to become president of the
+Pacific Coast Borax Company and later still, he was to head a three
+hundred million dollar corporation for the development of the San
+Francisco and Oakland areas and then face bankruptcy and ruin.</p>
+<p>Overlooking the site where Rosie and Aaron made the discovery,
+now stands the magnificent Furnace Creek Inn.</p>
+<p>One day while sitting on the hotel terrace, I noticed a plane discharge
+a group of the Company&rsquo;s English owners and their guests. Meticulously
+dressed, they paid scant attention to the desolation about and hastened
+to the cooling refuge of their caravansary. At dinner they sat down to
+buttered mignon and as they talked casually of the races at Ascot and the
+ball at Buckingham Palace, I looked out over that whitehot slab of hell
+and thought of Rosie and Aaron Winters trudging with calloused feet
+behind a burro&mdash;their dinner, sow-belly and beans.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_30">30</div>
+<h2 id="c6"><span class="small">Chapter IV</span>
+<br />John Searles and His Lake of Ooze</h2>
+<p>Actually the first discovery of borax in Death Valley was made by
+Isadore Daunet in 1875, five years before Winters&rsquo; discovery. Daunet
+had left Panamint City when it was apparent that town was through
+forever and with six of his friends was en route to new diggings in
+Arizona.</p>
+<p>He was a seasoned, hardy adventurer and risked a short cut across
+Death Valley in mid-summer. Running out of water, his party killed a
+burro, drank its blood; but the deadly heat beat them down. Indians
+came across one of the thirst-crazed men and learned that Daunet and
+others were somewhere about. They found Daunet and two companions.
+The others perished.</p>
+<p>When Daunet heard of the Winters sale five years later, like Rosie
+Winters he remembered the white stuff about the water, to which the
+Indians had taken him. He hurried back and in 1880 filed upon mining
+claims amounting to 260 acres. He started at once a refining plant which
+he called Eagle Borax Works and began operating one year before Old
+Harmony began to boil borax in 1881. Daunet&rsquo;s product however, was of
+inferior grade and unprofitable and work was soon abandoned. The unpredictable
+happened and dark days fell upon borax and William T.
+Coleman.</p>
+<p>In 1888 the advocates of free trade had a field day when the bill
+authored by Roger Q. Mills of Texas became the law of the land and
+borax went on the free list. The empire of Coleman tumbled in a financial
+scare&mdash;attributed by Coleman to a banker who had falsely undervalued
+Coleman&rsquo;s assets after a report by a borax expert who betrayed
+him. &ldquo;My assets,&rdquo; wrote Coleman, &ldquo;were $4,400,000. My debts $2,000,000.&rdquo;
+No person but Coleman lost a penny.</p>
+<p>But Borax Smith was never one to surrender without a fight and
+<span class="pb" id="Page_31">31</span>
+organized the Pacific Coast Borax Company to take over the property
+and the success of that company justifies the faith and the integrity of
+Coleman.</p>
+<p>Marketing the borax presented a problem in transportation even
+more difficult than it did in Tibet. At first it was scraped from the flat
+surface of the valley where it looked like alkali. It was later discovered
+in ledge form in the foothills of the Funeral Mountains. The sight of this
+discovery was called Monte Blanco&mdash;now almost a forgotten name.</p>
+<p>The borax was boiled in tanks and after crystallization was hauled
+by mule team across one hundred and sixty-five miles of mountainous
+desert at a pace of fifteen miles per day&mdash;if there were no accidents&mdash;or
+an average of twenty days for the round trip. The summer temperatures
+in the cooler hours of the night were 112 degrees; in the day, 120
+to 134 (the highest ever recorded). There were only four water holes on
+the route. Hence, water had to be hauled for the team.</p>
+<p>The borax was hauled to Daggett and Mojave and thence shipped to
+Alameda, California, to be refined. Charles Bennett, a rancher from
+Pahrump Valley, was among the first to contract the hauling of the raw
+product.</p>
+<p>In 1883 J. W. S. Perry, superintendent of the borax company, decided
+the company should own its freighting service and under his
+direction the famous 20 mule team borax wagons with the enormous
+wheels were designed. Orders were given for ten wagons. Each weighed
+7800 pounds. Two of these wagons formed a train, the load being
+40,000 pounds. To the second wagon was attached a smaller one with a
+tank holding 1200 gallons of water.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d leave around midnight,&rdquo; Ed Stiles said. &ldquo;Generally 110 or 112
+degrees.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The first hauls of these wagons were to Mojave, with overnight stations
+every sixteen miles. Thirty days were required for the round trip.</p>
+<p>In the Eighties a prospector in the then booming Calico Mountains,
+between Barstow and Yermo discovered an ore that puzzled him. He
+showed it to others and though the bustling town of Calico was filled
+with miners from all parts of the world, none could identify it. Under
+the blow torch the crystalline surface crumbled. Out of curiosity he had
+it assayed. It proved to be calcium borate and was the world&rsquo;s first knowledge
+of borax in that form. Previously it had been found in the form of
+&ldquo;cotton ball.&rdquo; The Pacific Coast Borax Company acquired the deposits;
+named the ore Colemanite in honor of W. T. Coleman.</p>
+<p>Operations in Death Valley were suspended and transferred to the
+new deposit, which saved a ten to fifteen days&rsquo; haul besides providing a
+superior product. The deposit was exhausted however, in the early part
+<span class="pb" id="Page_32">32</span>
+of the century when Colemanite was discovered in the Black Mountains
+and the first mine&mdash;the Lila C. began operations.</p>
+<p>It is a bit ironical that during the depression of the Thirties, two
+prospectors who neither knew nor cared anything about borax were
+poking around Kramer in relatively flat country in sight of the paved
+highway between Barstow and Mojave when they found what is believed
+to be the world&rsquo;s largest deposit of borax.</p>
+<p>It was a good time for bargain hunters and was acquired by the
+Pacific Coast Borax Company and there in a town named Boron, all its
+borax is now produced.</p>
+<p>Even before Aaron Winters or Isadore Daunet, John Searles was
+shipping borax out of Death Valley country. With his brother Dennis,
+member of the George party of 1861, Searles had returned and was
+developing gold and silver claims in the Slate Range overlooking a
+slimy marsh. They had a mill ready for operation when the Indians,
+then making war on the whites of Inyo county destroyed it with fire. A
+man of outstanding courage, Searles remained to recuperate his losses.
+He had read about the Trona deposits first found in the Nile Valley and
+was reminded of it when he put some of the water from the marsh in a
+vessel to boil and use for drinking. Later he noticed the formation of
+crystals and then suspecting borax he went to San Francisco with samples
+and sought backing. He found a promoter who after examining the samples,
+told him, &ldquo;If the claims are what these samples indicate, I can get
+all the money you need....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>An analysis was made showing borax.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But where is this stuff located?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Searles told him as definitely as he could. He was invited to remain
+in San Francisco while a company could be organized. &ldquo;It will take but
+a few days....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Searles explained that he hadn&rsquo;t filed on the ground and preferred to
+go back and protect the claim.</p>
+<p>The suave promoter brushed his excuse aside. &ldquo;Little chance of anybody&rsquo;s
+going into that God forsaken hole.&rdquo; He called an associate. &ldquo;Take
+Mr. Searles in charge and show him San Francisco....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Not a rounder, Searles bored quickly with night life. His funds ran
+low. He asked the loan of $25.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly....&rdquo; His host stepped into an adjacent office, returning
+after a moment to say the cashier was out but that he had left instructions
+to give Searles whatever he wished.</p>
+<p>Searles made trip after trip to the cashier&rsquo;s office but never found him
+in and becoming suspicious, he pawned his watch and hurried home,
+arriving at midnight four days later.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_33">33</div>
+<p>The next morning a stranger came and something about his attire,
+his equipment, and his explanation of his presence didn&rsquo;t ring true and
+Searles was wary even before the fellow, believing that Searles was still
+in San Francisco announced that he had been sent to find a man named
+Searles to look over some borax claims. &ldquo;Do you know where they are?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Searles thought quickly. He had not as yet located his monuments
+nor filed a notice. He pointed down the valley. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re about 20 miles
+ahead....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The fellow went on his way and before he was out of sight, Searles
+was staking out the marsh and with one of the most colorful of Death
+Valley characters, Salty Bill Parkinson, began operations in 1872. Incorporated
+under the name of San Bernardino Borax Company, the business
+grew and was later sold to Borax Smith&rsquo;s Pacific Coast Borax
+Company.</p>
+<p>Once while Searles was away hunting grizzlies, the Indians who had
+burned his mill, raided his ranch and drove his mules across the range.
+Suspecting the Piutes, he got his rifle and two pistols.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll kill you,&rdquo; he was warned.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to get those mules,&rdquo; Searles snapped and followed their
+tracks across the Slate Range and Panamint Valley. High in the overlooking
+mountains he came upon the Indians feasting upon one of the
+animals and was immediately attacked with bows and arrows. He killed
+seven bucks and the rest ran, but an Indian&rsquo;s arrow was buried in his
+eye. He jerked the arrow out, later losing the eye, pushed on and recovered
+the rest of his mules. Thereafter the Piutes avoided Searles and his
+marsh because, they said, he possessed the &ldquo;evil eye.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On the same lake where Searles began operations, the town of
+Trona was established to house the employees and processing plants of
+the American Potash and Chemical Company. It was British owned,
+though this ownership was successfully concealed in the intricate corporate
+structure of the Pacific Coast Borax Company, but later sold for
+twelve million dollars to Hollanders who left the management as they
+found it. During World War II Uncle Sam discovered that the Hollanders
+were stooges for German financiers&rsquo; Potash Cartel.</p>
+<p>The Alien Property Custodian took over and ordered the sale of the
+stock to Americans. Today it is what its name implies&mdash;an American
+company.</p>
+<p>From the ooze where John Searles first camped to hunt grizzly
+bears, is being taken more than 100 commercial products and every day
+of your life you use one or more of them if you eat, bathe, or wear
+clothes, brush your teeth or deal with druggist, grocer, dentist or doctor.</p>
+<p>Fearing exhaustion of the visible supply (the ooze is 70 feet deep)
+<span class="pb" id="Page_34">34</span>
+tests were made in 1917 to determine what was below. Result, supply
+one century; value two billion dollars.</p>
+<p>Here are a few things containing the product of the ooze. Fertilizer
+for your flowers, orchards, and fields. Baking soda, dyes, lubricating oils,
+paper. Ethyl gasoline, porcelain, medicines, fumigants, leathers, solvents,
+cosmetics, textiles, ceramics, chemical and pharmaceutical preparations.</p>
+<p>About 1300 tons of these products are shipped out every day over a
+company-owned railroad and transshipped at Searles&rsquo; Station over the
+Southern Pacific, to go finally in one form or another into every home in
+America and most of those in the entire world.</p>
+<p>The weird valley meanders southward from the lake through blown-up
+mountains gorgeously colored and grimly defiant&mdash;a trip to thrill the
+lover of the wild and rugged.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_35">35</div>
+<h2 id="c7"><span class="small">Chapter V</span>
+<br />But Where Was God?</h2>
+<p>For years, on the edge of the road near Tule Hole, a rough slab
+marked Jim Dayton&rsquo;s grave, on which were piled the bleached bones of
+Dayton&rsquo;s horses. On the board were these words: &ldquo;Jas. Dayton. Died
+1898.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The accuracy of the date of Dayton&rsquo;s death as given on the bronze
+plaque on the monument and on the marker which it replaced, has been
+challenged. The author of this book wrote the epitaph for the monument
+and the date on it is the date which was on the original marker&mdash;an old
+ironing board that had belonged to Pauline Gower. In a snapshot made
+by the writer, the date 1898, burned into the board with a redhot poker
+shows clearly.</p>
+<p>The two men who know most about the matter, Wash Cahill and
+Frank Hilton, whom he sent to find Dayton or his body, both declared
+the date on the marker correct.</p>
+<p>The late Ed Stiles brought Dayton into Death Valley. Stiles was
+working for Jim McLaughlin (Stiles called him McGlothlin), who
+operated a freighting service with headquarters at Bishop. McLaughlin
+ordered Stiles to take a 12 mule team and report to the Eagle Borax
+Works in Death Valley. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t give you any directions. You&rsquo;ll just
+have to find the place.&rdquo; Stiles had never been in Death Valley nor
+could he find anyone who had. It was like telling a man to start across
+the ocean and find a ship named Sally.</p>
+<p>At Bishop Creek in Owens Valley Stiles decided he needed a helper.
+There he found but one person willing to go&mdash;a youngster barely out of
+his teens&mdash;Jim Dayton.</p>
+<p>Dayton remained in Death Valley and somewhat late in life, on one
+of his trips out, romance entered. After painting an intriguing picture
+<span class="pb" id="Page_36">36</span>
+of the lotus life a girl would find at Furnace Creek, he asked the lady to
+share it with him. She promptly accepted.</p>
+<p>A few months later, the bride suggested that a trip out would make
+her love the lotus life even more and so in the summer of 1898 she
+tearfully departed. Soon she wrote Jim in effect that it hadn&rsquo;t turned out
+as she had hoped. Instead, she had become reconciled to shade trees,
+green lawns, neighbors, and places to go and if he wanted to live with
+her again he would just have to abandon the Death Valley paradise.</p>
+<p>Dayton loaded his wagon with all his possessions, called his dog and
+started for Daggett.</p>
+<p>Wash Cahill, who was to become vice-president of the borax company,
+was then working at its Daggett office. Cahill received from Dayton
+a letter which he saw from the date inside and the postmark on the envelope,
+had been held somewhere for at least two weeks before it was
+mailed.</p>
+<p>The letter contained Dayton&rsquo;s resignation and explained why Dayton
+was leaving. He had left a reliable man in temporary charge and was
+bringing his household goods; also two horses which had been borrowed
+at Daggett.</p>
+<p>Knowing that Dayton should have arrived in Daggett at least a week
+before the actual arrival of the letter, Cahill was alarmed and dispatched
+Frank Hilton, a teamster and handy man, and Dolph Lavares to see what
+had happened.</p>
+<p>On the roadside at Tule Hole they found Dayton&rsquo;s body, his dog
+patiently guarding it. Apparently Dayton had become ill, stopped to rest.
+&ldquo;Maybe the sun beat him down. Maybe his ticker jammed,&rdquo; said Shorty
+Harris, &ldquo;but the horses were fouled in the harness and were standing up
+dead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There could be no flowers for Jim Dayton nor peal of organ. So they
+went to his wagon, loosened the shovel lashed to the coupling pole. They
+dug a hole beside the road, rolled Jim Dayton&rsquo;s body into it.</p>
+<p>The widow later settled in a comfortable house in town with neighbors
+close at hand. There she was trapped by fire. While the flames were
+consuming the building a man ran up. Someone said, &ldquo;She&rsquo;s in that upper
+room.&rdquo; The brave and daring fellow tore his way through the crowd,
+leaped through the window into a room red with flames and dragged her
+out, her clothing still afire. He laid her down, beat out the flames, but she
+succumbed.</p>
+<p>A multitude applauded the hero. A little later over in Nevada another
+multitude lynched him. Between heroism and depravity&mdash;what?</p>
+<p>Although Tule Hole has long been a landmark of Death Valley,
+few know its story and this I believe to be its first publication.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_37">37</div>
+<p>One day while resting his team, Stiles noticed a patch of tules growing
+a short distance off the road and taking a shovel he walked over,
+started digging a hole on what he thought was a million to one chance
+of finding water, and thus reduce the load that had to be hauled for use
+between springs. &ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t dug a foot,&rdquo; he told me &ldquo;before I struck
+water. I dug a ditch to let it run off and after it cleared I drank some,
+found it good and enlarged the hole.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He went on to Daggett with his load. Repairs to his wagon train
+required a week and by the time he returned five weeks had elapsed. &ldquo;I
+stopped the team opposite the tules, got out and started over to look at
+the hole I&rsquo;d dug. When I got within a few yards three or four naked
+squaw hags scurried into the brush. I stopped and looked away toward
+the mountains to give &rsquo;em a chance to hide. Then I noticed two Indian
+bucks, each leading a riderless horse, headed for the Panamints. Then I
+knew what had happened.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ed Stiles was a desert man and knew his Indians. Somewhere up in
+a Panamint canyon the chief had called a powwow and when it was over
+the head men had gone from one wickiup to another and looked over all
+the toothless old crones who no longer were able to serve, yet consumed
+and were in the way. Then they had brought the horses and with two
+strong bucks to guard them, they had ridden down the canyon and out
+across the desert to the water hole. There the crones had slid to the
+ground. The bucks had dropped a sack of pi&ntilde;on nuts. Of course, the
+toothless hags could not crunch the nuts and even if they could, the nuts
+would not last long. Then they would have to crawl off into the scrawny
+brush and grabble for herbs or slap at grasshoppers, but these are quicker
+than palsied hands and in a little while the sun would beat them down.</p>
+<p>The rest was up to God.</p>
+<p>The distinction of driving the first 20 mule team has always
+been a matter of controversy. Over a nation-wide hook-up, the National
+Broadcasting Co. once presented a playlet based upon these conflicting
+claims. A few days afterward, at the annual Death Valley picnic held at
+Wilmington, John Delameter, a speaker, announced that he&rsquo;d made
+considerable research and was prepared to name the person actually
+entitled to that honor. The crowd, including three claimants of the title,
+moved closer, their ears cupped in eager attention as Delameter began
+to speak. One of the claimants nudged my arm with a confident smile,
+whispered, &ldquo;Now you&rsquo;ll know....&rdquo; A few feet away his rivals, their
+pale eyes fixed on the speaker, hunched forward to miss no word.</p>
+<p>Mr. Delameter said: &ldquo;There were several wagons of 16 mules and
+who drove the first of these, I do not know, but I do know who drove
+the first 20 mule team.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_38">38</div>
+<p>Covertly and with gleams of triumph, the claimants eyed each other
+as Delameter paused to turn a page of his manuscript. Then with a loud
+voice he said: &ldquo;I drove it myself!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>May God have mercy on his soul.</p>
+<p>A few days later I rang the doorbell at the ranch house of Ed Stiles,
+almost surrounded by the city of San Bernardino. As no one answered,
+I walked to the rear, and across a field of green alfalfa saw a man
+pitching hay in a temperature of 120 degrees. It was Stiles who in 1876
+was teaming in Bodie&mdash;toughest of the gold towns.</p>
+<p>I sat down in the shade of his hay. He stood in the sun. I said, &ldquo;Mr.
+Stiles, do you know who drove the first 20 mule team in Death Valley?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He gave me a kind of <i>et-tu, Brute</i> look and smiled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the fall of 1882 I was driving a 12 mule team from the Eagle
+Borax Works to Daggett. I met a man on a buckboard who asked if the
+team was for sale. I told him to write Mr. McLaughlin. It took 15 days to
+make the round trip and when I got back I met the same man. He
+showed me a bill of sale for the team and hired me to drive it. He had
+an eight mule team and a new red wagon, driven by a fellow named
+Webster. The man in the buckboard was Borax Smith.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Al Maynard, foreman for Smith and Coleman, was at work grubbing
+out mesquite to plant alfalfa on what is now Furnace Creek Ranch.
+Maynard told me to take the tongue out of the new wagon and put a
+trailer tongue in it. &lsquo;In the morning,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;hitch it to your wagon.
+Put a water wagon behind your trailer, hook up those eight mules with
+your team and go to Daggett.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That was the first time that a 20 mule team was driven out of
+Death Valley. Webster was supposed to swamp for me. But when he saw
+his new red wagon and mules hitched up with my outfit, he walked into
+the office and quit his job.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_39">39</div>
+<h2 id="c8"><span class="small">Chapter VI</span>
+<br />Death Valley Geology</h2>
+<p>The pleasure of your trip through the Big Sink will be enhanced if
+you know something about the structural features which are sure to
+arrest your attention.</p>
+<p>For undetermined ages Death Valley was desert. Then rivers and
+lakes. Rivers dried. Lakes evaporated. Again, desert. It is believed that in
+thousands of years there have been no changes other than those caused
+by earthquakes and erosion.</p>
+<p>It is no abuse of the superlative to say that the foremost authority
+upon Death Valley geology is Doctor Levi Noble, who has studied it
+under the auspices of the U.S. Geological Survey since 1917. He has
+ridden over more of it than anyone and because of his studies, earlier
+conclusions of geologists are scrapped today.</p>
+<p>From a pamphlet published by the American Geological Society
+with the permission of the U. S. Dept. of Interior, now out of print, I
+quote a few passages which Doctor Noble, its author, once described to
+me as &ldquo;dull reading, even for scientists.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The southern Death Valley region contains rocks of at least eight
+geologic systems whose aggregate thickness certainly exceeds 45,000 feet
+for the stratified rocks alone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The dissected playa or lake beds in Amargosa Valley between
+Shoshone and Tecopa contain elephant remains that are Pleistocene....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Rainbow Mountain is one of the geological show places of the
+Death Valley region.... Here the Amargosa river has cut a canyon
+1000 feet deep.... The mountain is made up of thrust slices of Cambrian
+and pre-Cambrian rocks alternating with slices of Tertiary rocks,
+all of which dip in general about 30 to 40 degrees eastward, but are
+also anticlinally arched.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;None of the geologic terms in common use appear exactly to fit
+<span class="pb" id="Page_40">40</span>
+this mosaic of large tightly packed individual blocks of different ages
+occupying a definite zone above a major thrust fault.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The significant feature is that a stratum that began with creation
+may lie above one that is an infant in the age of rock&mdash;a puzzle that
+will engage men of Levi Noble&rsquo;s talents for years to come. But one
+doesn&rsquo;t have to be a member of the American Geological Society to
+find thrills in other gripping features.</p>
+<p>Throughout the area south of Shoshone are many hot springs containing
+boron and fluorine&mdash;some with traces of radium. The water
+is believed to come from a buried river. The source of other hot springs
+in the Death Valley area is unknown.</p>
+<p>More startling features were related to Shorty Harris and me at
+Bennett&rsquo;s Well in the bottom of Death Valley where we met one of
+Shorty&rsquo;s friends. Lanky and baked brown, in each wrinkle of his face
+the sun had etched a smile. &ldquo;Shorty,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;yachts will be sailing
+around here some day. There&rsquo;s a passage to the sea, sure as hell.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What makes you think so?&rdquo; Shorty asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Those salt pools. Just come from there. I was watching the
+crystals; felt the ground move a little. Pool started sloshing. A sea
+serpent with eyes big as a wagon wheel and teeth full of kelp stuck
+his head up. Where&rsquo;d he come from? No kelp in this valley. That
+prove anything?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ubehebe Crater is believed to have resulted from the only major
+change in the topography of the valley since its return to desert, but
+John Delameter, old time freighter, thought geologists didn&rsquo;t know
+what they were talking about. &ldquo;When I first saw Saratoga Spring I
+could straddle it. Full of fish four inches long. Next time, three springs
+and a lake. Fish shrunk to one inch and different shaped head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Actually these fish are the degenerate descendants of the larger fish
+that lived in the streams and lakes that once watered Death Valley&mdash;an
+interesting study in the survival of species. The real name, <i>Cyprinodon
+Macularius</i>, is too large a mouthful for the natives so they are called
+desert sardines, though they are in reality a small killifish.</p>
+<p>Dan Breshnahan, in charge of a road crew working between Furnace
+Creek Inn and Stove Pipe Well, ordered some of the men to dig a hole
+to sink some piles. Two feet beneath a hard crust they encountered
+muck. When they hit the pile with a sledge it would bounce back. Dan
+put a board across the top. With a man on each end of the board, the
+rebound was prevented and the pile driven into hard earth. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m convinced
+that under that road is a lake of mire and Lord help the fellow
+who goes through,&rdquo; Dan said.</p>
+<p>A heavily loaded 20 mule team wagon driven by Delameter
+<span class="pb" id="Page_41">41</span>
+broke the surface of this ooze and two days were required to get it out.
+To test the depth, he tied an anvil to his bridle rein and let it down.
+The lead line of a 20 mule team is 120 feet long. It sank (he said)
+the length of the line and reached no bottom.</p>
+<p>On Ash Meadows, a few miles from Death Valley Junction and on
+the side of a mountain is what is known as The Devil&rsquo;s Hole which it is
+said has no bottom. True or false, none has ever been found.</p>
+<p>A steep trail leads down to the water which will then be over your
+head. Indians will tell you that a squaw fell into this hole within the
+memory of the living and that she was sucked to the bottom and came
+out at Big Spring several miles distant. The latter is a large hole in the
+middle of the desert and from its throat, also bottomless, pours a large
+volume of clear, warm water.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Explored?&rdquo; shouted Dad Fairbanks one day when a white-haired
+prospector declared every foot of Death Valley had been worked over.
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t scratched!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Only the day before (in 1934), Dr. Levi Noble had been working
+in the mountains overlooking the valley on the east rim. Through his
+field glasses he saw a formation that looked like a natural bridge. When
+he returned to Shoshone he phoned Harry Gower, Pacific Borax Co.
+official at Furnace Creek of his discovery and suggested that Gower investigate.</p>
+<p>Since Furnace Creek Inn wanted such attractions for its guests,
+Gower went immediately and almost within rifle shot of a road used
+since the Seventies, he found the bridge.</p>
+<p>That too is Death Valley&mdash;land of continual surprise.</p>
+<p>Death Valley is the hottest spot in North America. The U.S. Army,
+in a test of clothing suitable for hot weather made some startling discoveries.
+According to records, on one day in every seven years the
+temperature reaches 180 on the valley floor. But five feet above ground
+where official temperatures are recorded the thermometer drops 55
+degrees to 125.</p>
+<p>The highest temperature ever recorded was 134 at Furnace Creek
+Ranch&mdash;only two degrees below the world&rsquo;s record in Morocco. In 1913,
+the week of July 7-14, the temperature never got below 127. Official
+recording differs little from that of Arabia, India, and lower California,
+but the duration is longer.</p>
+<p>Left in the sun, water in a pail of ordinary size will evaporate in an
+hour. Bodies decompose two or three hours after rigor mortis begins but
+some have been found in certain areas at higher altitudes dried like
+leather. A rattlesnake dropped into a bucket and set in the sun will die
+in 20 minutes.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_42">42</div>
+<p>The evaporation of salt from the body is rapid and many prospectors
+swallow a mouthful of common salt before going out into a killing sun.</p>
+<p>One of the pitiable features of death on the desert is that bodies are
+found with fingers worn to the bone from frantic digging and often
+beneath the cadaver is water at two feet.</p>
+<p>There is also legendary weather for outside consumption. Told to see
+Joe Ryan as a source of dependable information, a tourist approached
+Joe and asked what kind of temperature one would encounter in the
+valley.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Heat is always exaggerated,&rdquo; said Joe. &ldquo;Of course it gets a little
+warm now and then. Hottest I ever saw was in August when I crossed
+the valley with Mike Lane. I was walking ahead when I heard Mike
+coughing. I looked around. Seemed to be choking and I went back. Mike
+held out his palm and in it was a gold nugget and Mike was madder&rsquo;n
+hell. &lsquo;My teeth melted,&rsquo; Mike wailed. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m going to kill that dentist. He
+told me they would stand heat up to 500 degrees.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I met an engaging liar at Bradbury Well one day. He was gloriously
+drunk and was telling the group about him that he was a great grand-son
+of the fabulous Paul Bunyan.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Gramp was a mighty man, but he was dumb
+at that. One time I saw him put a handful of pebbles in his mouth and
+blow &rsquo;em one at a time at a flock of wild geese flying a mile high. He
+got every goose, but how did he end up? Not so good. He straddled the
+Pacific ocean one day and prowled around in China, and saw a cross-eyed
+pigeon-toed midget with buck teeth. Worse, she had a temper that
+would melt pig-iron.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gramp went nuts over her. What happened? He married her. She
+had some trained fleas. If Gramp got sassy, she put fleas in his ears and
+ants in his pants and stood by, laughing at him, while he scratched himself
+to death. Hell of an end for Gramp, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the late fall, winter, and early spring perfect days are the rule and
+if you are among those who like uncharted trails, do not hurry. Then
+when night comes you will climb a moonbeam and play among the
+stars. You will learn too, that life goes on away from box scores, radio
+puns, and girls with a flair for Veuve Cliquot.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_43">43</div>
+<h2 id="c9"><span class="small">Chapter VII</span>
+<br />Indians of the Area</h2>
+<p>The Indians of the Death Valley country were dog eaters&mdash;both
+those of Shoshone and Piute origin. Both had undoubtedly degenerated
+as a result of migrations. The Shoshones (Snakes) had originally lived
+in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. The Piutes in Utah, Idaho, and
+Nevada.</p>
+<p>The true blood connection of coast Indians may well be a matter
+of dispute. &ldquo;Almost every 15 or 20 leagues you&rsquo;ll find a distinct dialect,&rdquo;
+was said of California Indians. (Boscana in Robinson&rsquo;s Life in California,
+p. 220.) Most of them were hardly above the animal in intelligence or
+morality. Though the Death Valley Indians are called Shoshone and
+Piutes, to what extent their blood justifies the classification is the white
+man&rsquo;s guess.</p>
+<p>Those whom Dr. French found in the Panamint said they had no
+tribal name. Many California tribes were given names by the whites,
+these names being the American&rsquo;s interpretation of a sound uttered by
+one group to designate another. &ldquo;They do not seem to have any names
+for themselves.&rdquo; (Schoolcraft&rsquo;s Arch., Vol. 3.)</p>
+<p>All seem to agree however, that the farther north the Indian lived,
+the more intelligent he was and the better his physique&mdash;which would
+indicate a relation to the better diet in the lush, well-watered and game-filled
+valleys and foothills. Some of the women are described by early
+writers as &ldquo;exceedingly pretty.&rdquo; Others, &ldquo;flat-faced and pudgy.&rdquo; &ldquo;The
+Indians in the northern portion ... are vastly superior in stature and
+intellect to those found in the southern part.&rdquo; (Hubbard, Golden Era,
+1856.)</p>
+<p>Certainly those found in Death Valley country reflected in their
+persons and in their character the niggardly land and the struggle for
+<span class="pb" id="Page_44">44</span>
+survival upon it. They were treacherous as its terrain. Cruel as its cactus.
+Tenacious as its stunted life.</p>
+<p>It is interesting to note the range of opinion and the conclusions
+drawn by earlier travelers.</p>
+<p>Of the Shoshones: &ldquo;Very rigid in their morals.&rdquo; (Remi and Brenchley&rsquo;s
+Journal, Vol. 1, p. 85.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They of all men are lowest, lying in a state of semi-torpor in holes
+in the ground in winter and in spring, crawling forth and eating grass
+on their hands and knees until able to regain their feet ... living in
+filth ... no bridles on their passions ... surely room for no
+missing links between them and brutes.&rdquo; (Bancroft&rsquo;s Native Races, Vol.
+1, p. 440.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is common practice ... to gamble away their wives and children....
+A husband will prostitute his wife to a stranger for a trifling
+present.&rdquo; (Ibid. ch. 4, Vol. 1.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Our Piute has a peculiar way of getting a foretaste of connubial
+bliss&mdash;cohabiting experimentally with his intended for two or three days
+previous to the nuptial ceremony, at the end of which time either party
+can stay further proceedings to indulge further trials until a companion
+more congenial is found.&rdquo; (S. F. Medical Press, Vol. 3, p. 155. See also,
+Lewis and Clark&rsquo;s Travels, p. 307.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Piutes are the most degraded and least intellectual Indians
+known to trappers.&rdquo; (Farnham&rsquo;s Life, p. 336.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pah-utes are undoubtedly the most docile Indians on the continent.&rdquo;
+(Indian Affairs Report, 1859, p. 374.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Honest and trustworthy, but lazy and dirty,&rdquo; is said of the Shoshones.
+(Remi and Brenchley&rsquo;s Journal, p. 123.) Some ethnologists
+declare they cannot be identified with any other American tribe.</p>
+<p>Wives were purchased, cash or credit. Polygamy prevailed. Unmarried
+women belonged to all, but Gibbs says women bewailed their
+virginity for three days prior to marriage. &ldquo;They allow but one wife.&rdquo;
+(Prince in California Farmer, Oct. 18, 1861.)</p>
+<p>Husbands were allowed to kill their mothers-in-law. The heart of a
+valiant enemy killed in battle was eaten raw or cut into pieces and made
+into soup. Women captives of other tribes were ravished, sold or kept as
+slaves. Some Southern California tribes sold their women and occasionally
+tribes were found without a single squaw.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They are exceedingly virtuous.&rdquo; (Remi and Brenchley&rsquo;s Journal,
+Vol. 1, pp. 1-23-8.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Given to sensual excesses.&rdquo; (Farnham&rsquo;s Travel, p. 62.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Nevada Shoshones are the most pure and uncorrupted aborigines
+<span class="pb" id="Page_45">45</span>
+on the continent ... scrupulously clean ... chaste.&rdquo; (Prince,
+California Farmer, Oct. 18, 1861.)</p>
+<p>Thus the Indian who came or was driven to this wasteland evoked
+conflicting opinions and the real picture is vague.</p>
+<p>The lowest of California Indians is believed to have been the Digger,
+so-called because he existed chiefly upon roots and lived in burrows of
+his own making, but his isolation by ethnologists is not convincing. He
+was found around Shoshone by Fremont and Kit Carson and inhabited
+valleys to the north and west, but in the Death Valley region the Piute
+and Shoshone were dominant.</p>
+<p>Blood vengeance was deep-rooted. Found with the Indian collection
+of Dr. Simeon Lee at Carson City was a revealing manuscript that tells
+how swiftly it struck.</p>
+<p>Mudge rode up to another Indian standing on a Carson City street
+and without warning shot him dead and galloped away. The dead man
+had two cousins working at Lake Tahoe. The murder had occurred at
+9:30 a.m. and by some means of communication unknown to whites,
+they were on Mudge&rsquo;s trail within two hours and had found him. Mudge
+promptly killed them both and fled again. Sheriff Ulric engaged Captain
+Johnnie, a Piute, to track the slayer. He found Mudge&rsquo;s lair, but Mudge
+was a sure shot, well protected and to rush him meant certain death.
+The posse decided to keep watch until thirst or hunger forced him out.
+&ldquo;Me fix um,&rdquo; said Captain Johnnie.</p>
+<p>He disappeared, but soon returned with an enormous amount of
+tempting food which he contrived to place within easy reach of Mudge.
+&ldquo;Him see moppyass (food). Eat bellyful and fall down asleep.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That is exactly what happened and old Demi-John, the father of the
+murdered boys crawled stealthily through the sage and with his hunting
+knife severed the head from the sleeping Mudge&rsquo;s body.</p>
+<p>In Mono county Piutes killed the Chinese owner of a cafe and fed
+the carcass to their dogs. In court they blandly confessed and justified it,
+claiming the Chinaman had killed and pickled one of their missing
+tribesmen and then sold and served to them portions of the victim as
+&ldquo;corned beef and cabbage.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For the desert Indian life was raw to the bone. He was an unemotional,
+fatalistic creature as ruthless as the land. In the struggle to live,
+he had acquired endurance and cunning. He knew his desert&mdash;its
+moods, its stingy dole, its chary tolerance of life. He knew where the
+mountain sheep hid, the screw-bean grew and the fat lizard crawled.
+He knew where the drop of water seeped from the lone hill. He combed
+the lower levels of the range for chuckwalla, edible snakes, horned
+toads&mdash;anything with flesh; stuffed the kill into bags and preserved
+<span class="pb" id="Page_46">46</span>
+them for later use. He made flour from mesquite beans; stored pi&ntilde;ons,
+roots, herbs in his desperate fight to survive, and anything that crawled,
+flew, or walked was food. I have seen a squaw squatted beside the carcass
+of a dog, picking out the firmer flesh.</p>
+<p>When the Piute came to a spring, the first thing he did was to look
+about for a flat rock which he was sure to find if a member of his tribe
+had previously been there. Kneeling, he would skim the water from the
+surface and dash it upon this rock. Then he smelled the rock. If there
+was an odor of onion or garlic, he knew it contained arsenic and was
+deadly. Naturally, he would be concerned about another water hole.
+He had only to look about him. He would find partially imbedded in
+the earth several stones fixed in the form of a circle not entirely closed.
+The opening pointed in the direction of the next water. The distance
+to that water was indicated by stones inside the circle. There he would
+find for example, three stones pointing toward the opening. He knew
+that each of those stones indicated one &ldquo;sleep.&rdquo; Therefore he would
+have to sleep three times before he got there. In other words, it was
+three days&rsquo; journey.</p>
+<p>But which of these trails leading to the water should he take? There
+might be several trails converging at the water hole. The matter was
+decided for him. He walked along each of those trails for a few feet.
+Beside one of them he would find an oblong stone. By its shape and
+position he knew that was the trail that led to the next water.</p>
+<p>Under such circumstances a man would perhaps wonder if upon
+arrival at the next water hole he would find that water also unfit to use.
+The information was at hand. If, upon top of that oblong stone he
+found a smaller stone placed crosswise and white in color, he knew the
+water would be good water. If a piece of black malpai was there instead
+of the white stone, he knew the next water would be poison also.</p>
+<p>Not infrequently he would find other information at the water hole
+if there were boulders about, or chalky cliffs upon which the Indian
+could place his picture writing. If he saw the crude drawing of a lone
+man, it indicated that the land about was uninhabited except by hunters,
+but if upon the pictured torso were marks indicating the breasts of a
+woman, he knew there was a settlement about and he would find squaws
+and children and something to eat.</p>
+<p>Frequently other information was left for this wayfaring Indian.
+Under conspicuous stones about, he might find a feather with a hole
+punched through it or one that was notched. The former indicated that
+one had been there who had killed his man. The notch indicated that
+he had cut a throat.</p>
+<p>Since there was a difference between the moccasins of Indian tribes,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_47">47</span>
+the dust about would often inform him whether the buck who went
+before was friend or enemy.</p>
+<p>Like all American aborigines, the Piute had his medicine man, but
+the manner of his choosing is not clear. The one selected had to accept
+the role, though the honor never thrilled him, because he knew that
+when the score of death was three against him he would join his lost
+patients in the happy hereafter. Occasionally he was stoned to death
+by the relatives of the first lost patient and with the approval of the
+rest of the tribe. Not infrequently it was believed the medicine man&rsquo;s
+departed spirit then entered the medicine man&rsquo;s kin and they were also
+butchered or stoned to death.</p>
+<p class="tb"><span id="piute" class="sc">Note.</span> Early writers refer to Pau Eutahs, Pah Utes, Paiuches,
+Pyutes, and Paiutes. The word Piute is believed to mean true Ute.</p>
+<p>Bancroft claimed the Piutes and Pah Utes were separate tribes, the
+latter being the Trout or Ochi Indians of Walker River; the former the
+Tule (or Toy) Indians of Pyramid Lake.</p>
+<p>There was an undetermined number of branches of the original
+Utah stock. Besides the above, there was another tribe called by other
+Indians, Cozaby Piutes, Cozaby being the Indian name of a worm that
+literally covered the shores of Mono Lake. This worm was a principal
+food of the tribe.</p>
+<p>Though &ldquo;Piute&rdquo; is the spelling justifiably used throughout the region,
+&ldquo;Pahute&rdquo; was chosen a few years ago by a group of scholars as the
+preferable form.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_48">48</div>
+<h2 id="c10"><span class="small">Chapter VIII</span>
+<br />Desert Gold. Too Many Fractions</h2>
+<p>On the Nevada desert wind-whipped Mount Davidson (or Sun
+Mountain) guided the Forty Niners across the flat Washoe waste. At
+its foot they rested and cursed it because it impeded their progress to
+the California goldfields. Ten years later they rushed back because it
+had become the fabulous Comstock, said to have produced more than
+$880,000,000, though the Nevada State bureau of mines places the
+figure at $347,892,336. The truth lies somewhere between.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pancake&rdquo; Comstock had acquired, more by bluff and cunning than
+labor, title to gold claims others had discovered and cursed a &ldquo;blue
+stuff&rdquo; that slowed the recovery of visible particles of gold. Later the
+&ldquo;blue stuff&rdquo; was blessed as incredibly rich silver. A mountain of gold
+and silver side by side. It just couldn&rsquo;t be.</p>
+<p>A new crop of overnight millionaires. New feet feeling for the first
+step on the social ladder. The Mackays, the Floods, the Fairs, the
+Hearsts.</p>
+<p>All this was more like current than twenty year old history to Jim
+Butler on May 18, 1900, when his hungry burro strayed up a hill in
+search of grass. Soon a city stood where the burro ate and soon adventurers
+were poking around in the canyons of Death Valley, 66 miles
+south.</p>
+<p>Jim Butler, more rancher than gold hunter was a likable happy-go-lucky
+fellow, who could strum a banjo and sing a song. But when he
+found the burro in Sawtooth Pass he saw a ledge which looked as if it
+might have values. Born in El Dorado county in California in 1855,
+Butler was more or less gold conscious, but unexcited he stuck a few
+samples in his pocket and went on after the burro.</p>
+<p>A story survives which states that a half-breed Shoshone Indian
+known as Charles Fisherman had told Butler of the existence of the ore
+<span class="pb" id="Page_49">49</span>
+without disclosing its location and that Butler was actually searching
+for it when the burro strayed. The preponderance of evidence, however,
+indicates that Butler was en route to Belmont to see his friend, Tasker
+Oddie, who was batching there in a cabin. He gave Oddie one of the
+samples and after his visit, left for home.</p>
+<p>Oddie laid the sample on a window sill and forgot it.</p>
+<p>In Klondike a few days later, Butler showed another sample to
+Frank Higgs, an assayer. Half in jest he said: &ldquo;Frank, I&rsquo;ve no money
+to pay for an assay, but I&rsquo;ll cut you in on this stuff if it shows anything.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Higgs looked at the sample and returned it to Butler: &ldquo;Just a waste
+of time. Forget it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Later in Belmont Henry Broderick, a prospector dropped in for a
+visit with Oddie and noticed the sample Butler had given Oddie and
+looked it over. &ldquo;This ore has good values,&rdquo; he told Oddie. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s worth
+investigating.&rdquo; Oddie knew that Broderick&rsquo;s opinion was not to be
+underrated.</p>
+<p>Oddie was a young lawyer with little practice and a salary of $100
+a year as District Attorney. Belmont had a population of 100. Oddie
+didn&rsquo;t have two dollars to risk, but he took the sample to W. C. Gayhart
+at Austin and offered Gayhart a fractional interest if he&rsquo;d assay it.
+With few customers, Gayhart took a chance.</p>
+<p>The ore showed values and Oddie was mildly excited. Butler lived
+35 miles away in wild, difficult country and Oddie wrote him, enclosing
+the assay. Several weeks passed before Butler received the letter.
+Then Butler and his wife returned to Belmont only to find Oddie could
+not go with them. Jim and Mrs. Butler now returned home, loaded
+provisions, tools, and camp equipment in a wagon and three days later,
+Aug. 26, 1900, they reached Sawtooth Pass and made camp.</p>
+<p>The Butlers staked out eight claims. Jim took for himself the one
+he considered best. He named it The Desert Queen. Mrs. Butler chose
+another and called it Mizpah. Jim located another for Oddie and named
+it Burro. The best proved to be Mrs. Butler&rsquo;s Mizpah.</p>
+<p>Returning to Belmont, they found Oddie at home. The matter of
+recording the location notices had to be attended to. &ldquo;That will cost ten
+or fifteen dollars,&rdquo; Butler said. Neither of them had any money. Wils
+Brougher was recorder of Nye county and Oddie&rsquo;s friend, so Oddie made
+a proposition to Brougher. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ll pay the recorder&rsquo;s fees we&rsquo;ll give you
+an eighth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Brougher said, &ldquo;Nye county is one of the largest counties in the
+United States, but there are only 400 people in it and I&rsquo;m not getting
+many fees these days. Leave &rsquo;em.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After they&rsquo;d gone Brougher looked at the assay Oddie had left and
+<span class="pb" id="Page_50">50</span>
+decided to take a chance. The setup was now: Butler and his wife
+five-eighths, Oddie, Brougher, and Gayhart, one-eighth each.</p>
+<p>They managed to pool resources and obtained $25 in cash to provide
+material and provisions.</p>
+<p>Brougher, Oddie, Jim, and Mrs. Butler set out in October, 1900.
+Mrs. Butler did the cooking while the men dug, drilled, and blasted two
+tons of ore. The ore was sacked and hauled 150 miles to Austin and
+shipped to a San Francisco smelter. The returns showed high values but
+still they had a major problem&mdash;money to develop the claims. Because
+the country had been prospected and pronounced worthless, men of
+millions were not backing a banjo-picking rancher and a young lawyer
+with no money and few clients. The answer was leasing to idle miners
+willing to gamble muscle against money. The venture made many of
+them rich. The others recovered more than wages. As the leases expired
+the owners took them over.</p>
+<p>The camp where Mrs. Butler cooked became the site of the Mizpah
+Hotel and the City of Tonopah and the hill where the burro strayed
+produced many millions.</p>
+<p>There are several versions of the Butler discovery and the writer
+does not pretend that his own is the true one. He can only say that he
+knew many of those who were first on the scene and some of those who
+held the first and best leases, and his conclusions are based on their
+personal narratives.</p>
+<p>Oddie became one of the moguls of mining, Nevada&rsquo;s governor, and
+a senator of the United States.</p>
+<p>Twenty-six miles south of Tonopah was a place known as Grandpa,
+so named because there were always a few old prospectors camped at
+the water hole known as Rabbit Springs. These patriarchs had combed
+the desert about, for years without success.</p>
+<p>Al Myers, a prospector working on a hill nearby, came to the
+Grandpa Spring to fill a barrel of water and found his friend, Shorty
+Harris, who had been camping there, packing his burros to leave.
+&ldquo;Better hang around, Shorty,&rdquo; Al advised. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting color.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Luck to you,&rdquo; Shorty laughed. &ldquo;But any place where these old
+grandpas can&rsquo;t find color, is no place for me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In six weeks Myers and Tom Murphy made the big strike (1903)
+and Grandpa became Goldfield&mdash;one of the West&rsquo;s most spectacular
+camps. Some of the more promising claims of Goldfield were leased,
+the most valuable being that of Hays and Monette, on the Mohawk.
+In 106 days the lease produced $5,000,000.</p>
+<p>Out of the Mohawk one car was shipped which yielded over
+$579,000 and ore in all of the better mines was so rich that Goldfield
+<span class="pb" id="Page_51">51</span>
+quickly became the high-grader&rsquo;s paradise. Though wages at Tonopah
+were twice those paid at Goldfield, miners deserted the older camp for
+the lower wage and made more than the difference by concealing high-grade
+in the cuffs of their overalls or in other ingenious receptacles
+built into their clothing. Miners and muckers took the girls of their
+choice out of honkies and installed them in cottages. More than one
+of these gorgeous creatures, having found her man in her boom-town
+crib, later ascended life&rsquo;s grand stairway to live virtuously and bravely
+in a Wilshire mansion or a swank hotel.</p>
+<p>To stop the stealing, a change room was installed but many had
+already secured themselves against want. A wealthy resident of California
+once told me: &ldquo;With the proceeds of the high-grade I took home
+I built rentals that led to bank connections and more lucky investments.
+Everybody was doing it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Tex Rickard, a gambler and saloon man, already known in Alaska
+and San Francisco for spectacular adventures, here began his career
+as a sports promoter in the ill-advised Jeffries-Johnson fight.</p>
+<p>One morning his Great Northern had more than its usual crowd.
+Men stood three deep at the bar, games were busy and Billy Murray,
+the cashier was rushed. It was not unusual for desert men to leave
+their money with Murray. He would tag and sack it and toss it aside,
+but today there was a steady stream being poked at him. Finally it got
+in his way and he had it taken through the alley to the bank, but the
+deluge continued.</p>
+<p>When it again got in his way, his assistant having stepped out, Billy
+took it to the bank himself. There he learned the reason for the flood
+of money. A run was being made on the John S. Cook bank. He
+satisfied himself that the bank was safe and returned to his cage. As
+fast as the money came in the front door, it went out the back and
+Billy Murray thus saved the bank and the town from collapse.</p>
+<p>A resourceful youngster who knew that wherever men recklessly
+acquire, they recklessly spend, dropped in from Oregon, got a job in
+Tom Kendall&rsquo;s Tonopah Club as a dealer. Good looking and likable,
+he made friends, took over the gambling concession and was soon
+taking over Goldfield and the state of Nevada. He was George Wingfield,
+who, when offered a seat in the United States Senate, calmly
+declined it.</p>
+<p>Goldfield is only 40 miles from the northern boundary of Death
+Valley National Monument and was in bonanza when Shorty Harris
+walked into the Great Northern saloon. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been drinking gulch
+likker,&rdquo; he told the bartender. &ldquo;Give me the best in the house.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_52">52</div>
+<p>The bartender reached for a bottle. &ldquo;This is 100 proof 14 year old
+bourbon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Shorty drank it, laid a goldpiece on the bar. &ldquo;Good stuff. I&rsquo;ll have
+another.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You must be celebrating,&rdquo; the bartender said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You guessed it,&rdquo; Shorty said and laid a piece of high-grade beside
+his glass. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got more gold where that came from than Uncle Sam&rsquo;s
+got in the mint.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A faro dealer noticed the ore and picked it up. &ldquo;Good looking rock,&rdquo;
+he said and passed it to a promoter standing by. In a moment a crowd
+had gathered. &ldquo;Looks like Breyfogle quartz,&rdquo; the promoter said and
+led Shorty aside. &ldquo;I can make you a million on this. Want to sell?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not on your life,&rdquo; Shorty said, but after pressure and a few drinks,
+he agreed to part with an eighth interest. The deal closed, he left to
+see friends around town. He found each of them in a barroom. News
+of his strike had preceded him and each time he laid the ore on the bar
+someone wanted an interest. Someone called him aside and someone
+bought the drinks.</p>
+<p>Within an hour every fortune hunter in Goldfield was looking for
+Shorty Harris, each believing Shorty had found the Lost Breyfogle.</p>
+<p>When he left town, weaving in the dust of his burros, sixteen men
+wished him well, for each had a piece of paper conveying a one-eighth
+interest in Shorty&rsquo;s claim.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_53">53</div>
+<h2 id="c11"><span class="small">Chapter IX</span>
+<br />Romance Strikes the Parson</h2>
+<p>Scorning Al Myers&rsquo;s advice to locate a claim on the Goldfield hill,
+Shorty Harris headed south, prospecting as he went until he reached
+Monte Beatty&rsquo;s ranch where he camped with Beatty, a squaw man.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to look at a rhyolite formation in the hills four miles west.
+It looks good&mdash;that hill,&rdquo; Shorty told him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Forget it,&rdquo; Beatty said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve combed every inch.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With faith in Beatty&rsquo;s knowledge of the country, he abandoned the
+trip and crossed the Amargosa desert to Daylight Springs, found the
+country full of amateur prospectors excited by the discoveries at Tonopah
+and Goldfield. After a few weeks he decided there was nothing
+worthwhile to be found. &ldquo;I had a hunch Beatty could be wrong about
+that formation and decided to go back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was well outfitted and with five burros and more than enough
+provisions, was ready to go when, out of the bush came a cleancut
+youngster&mdash;a novice who had brought his wife along.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shorty,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we&rsquo;re out of grub. Can you spare any?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure. But you&rsquo;d be better off to go with me. I have enough grub
+for all of us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ed Cross had all to gain; nothing to lose by following an experienced
+prospector.</p>
+<p>At a water hole known as Buck Springs they made camp. Within
+an hour they went up a canyon, each working a side of it. Shorty broke
+a piece of quartz from an outcropping; saw shades of turquoise and
+jade. &ldquo;Come a-runnin&rsquo; Ed,&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got the world by the
+tail and a downhill pull.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They staked out the discovery claims. &ldquo;How many more should we
+locate?&rdquo; Cross asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;None. Give the other fellow a chance. If this is as good as we
+<span class="pb" id="Page_54">54</span>
+think, we&rsquo;ve got all the money we&rsquo;ll ever need. If it isn&rsquo;t and the other
+fellow makes a good showing it will help us sell this one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They went to Goldfield. Shorty showed the sample to Bob Montgomery,
+an old friend. Bob was skeptical. But in an hour the news was
+out and Goldfield en masse headed for the new strike. Those, who
+couldn&rsquo;t get conveyances, walked. Some pulled burro carts across the
+desert. Some started out with wheelbarrows. Jack Salsbury began to
+move lumber. Others brought merchandise, barrels of liquor. Everything
+to build a town.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Specimens of my ore,&rdquo; Shorty said, &ldquo;were used by Tiffany for ring
+settings, lavallieres, bracelets. It went to Paris and London. Ore broken
+from the ledge sold for $50 a pound. I must have given away thousands
+of dollars&rsquo; worth of it for souvenirs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Overnight Rhyolite was born. Shorty bought a barrel of liquor, drove
+a row of nails around the barrel, hung tin dippers on the nails and
+invited the town to quench its thirst. Two railroads came. One, 114
+miles from Las Vegas. Another, 200 miles from Ludlow.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Two things influenced me in naming it Bullfrog,&rdquo; Shorty said. &ldquo;Ed
+had asked, &lsquo;what&rsquo;ll we name it?&rsquo; As I looked at the green ore in my
+hand, a frog bellowed. &lsquo;Bullfrog,&rsquo; I said.&rdquo; (One writer has stated erroneously
+that there is not a bullfrog on the desert.)</p>
+<p>The tycoons of mining and their agents appeared as if borne on
+magic carpets and in a little while men who would have turned him
+from their doors, were fawning around the little man with the golden
+smile and the ugly brawl for the Bullfrog was on&mdash;a struggle between
+cheap promoters who gave him cheap whiskey and moguls who gave
+him champagne.</p>
+<p>Scores of yarns have been written about the sale of the Bullfrog.
+It was one of the few things in Shorty&rsquo;s life which he discussed with
+reserve. In my residence two years before he died and in my presence
+he told my wife, to whom he was singularly devoted, the sordid story.
+&ldquo;Cross had a good head,&rdquo; Shorty said. &ldquo;He attended to business, sold
+his interest and retired to a good ranch.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I woke up one morning and judging from the empties, I must have
+had a grand evening. I reached for a full pint on the table and under it
+was a piece of paper with a note. I read it and learned for the first time
+that I&rsquo;d sold the Bullfrog.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The law would have released you from that contract,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d signed it,&rdquo; he answered quietly.</p>
+<p>I thought of the crumbling adobe on the Ballarat flat and the lean
+years that followed.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_55">55</div>
+<p>&ldquo;At that, I got good money for a fellow like me,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+never wanted for anything.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A fortune blown like a bubble meant absolutely nothing&mdash;stopped
+no laugh; dimmed no hope; quenched no fire in his eager eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If I&rsquo;d got those millions the big boys would have hauled me off
+to town, put a white shirt on me. Maybe they would have made me
+believe Shorty Harris was important. &lsquo;Mr. Harris this and Mr. Harris
+that.&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve got something they can&rsquo;t take away. I step out of my cabin
+every morning and look it over&mdash;100 miles of outdoors. All mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The future of Rhyolite seemed assured when Bob Montgomery sold
+to Charles M. Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel Company, his
+interest in the claim known as the Montgomery Shoshone for more than
+$2,000,000.</p>
+<p>The discovery of this claim has been accredited to Shoshone Johnnie
+and historians have said that Montgomery bought it from Johnnie for
+a pair of overalls, a buggy, and a few dollars. Actually Bob Montgomery
+was among the first on the scene following Shorty&rsquo;s discovery strike and
+located the claim himself. Even if Johnnie had located it Montgomery
+would have been entitled to one-half interest for the reason that he had
+been grubstaking Johnnie for years.</p>
+<p>It never paid as a mine, but America was gold mad and the two
+railroads which brought mail for Rhyolite also carried stock certificates
+out and the promoters lost nothing.</p>
+<p>The strike at Bullfrog was made in 1904. Rhyolite attained a population
+of about 14,000 at its peak&mdash;then started downward. On January
+1, 1926, I made a camp fire in its empty streets and beside it tried
+to sleep through a biting wind that seemed aptly enough a dirge. The
+next morning I poked around in the abandoned stores to marvel at
+things of value left behind. Chinaware and silver in hurriedly abandoned
+houses and in the leading cafe. The cribs still bore the castoff ribbons
+and silks of the girls and for all I know, the satin slipper which I found
+on a bed may have been the one that Shorty Harris filled with champagne
+to toast the charms of Flaming Jane.</p>
+<p>I walked up to the vacant depot. Across the door, through which
+thousands had passed from incoming trains with youth and hope and
+the eagerness of life, lay the long-dead carcass of a cow. It fitted, it
+seemed to me, the scene about.</p>
+<p>Like Tonopah, Skidoo on top of Tucki Mountain overlooking Death
+Valley may be accredited to the straying of a burro in 1905.</p>
+<p>John Ramsey and John Thompson, two prospectors, camped overnight
+in Emigrant Canyon which leads into Death Valley. The grass
+about was lush and they thought it safe to turn the burros loose. The
+<span class="pb" id="Page_56">56</span>
+burros strayed during the night and because the walls on the east side
+of the canyon are perpendicular, search was immediately confined to
+the sloping west area. But the burros, always unpredictable, found a
+way to ascend Tucki Mountain and there they were found&mdash;one of
+them actually straddling an outcropping of gold.</p>
+<p>This happened on the 23rd day of the month and because of a popular
+current slang expression, &ldquo;Twenty-three for you&mdash;skidoo,&rdquo; (meaning
+phooey, or shut up) the claim and the town were named Skidoo.</p>
+<p>Bob Montgomery bought the claim on sight. A winding road with
+a spectacular view of Death Valley was built, a mill installed on the
+side of Telephone Canyon and water brought 22 miles from Panamint
+Canyon. A long rambling building on top of the mountain served as
+offices and living quarters for officials. A broad porch encircled it and
+afforded a sweeping and unforgettable view of Death Valley country.</p>
+<p>On the area about this building was the company town. Adjoining
+was &ldquo;Our Town&rdquo; where the cribs and honkies thrived.</p>
+<p>I first visited it with Shorty Harris, holding my breath most of the
+way on the steep, narrow, and winding road. We appropriated the
+company building for our temporary home. Shorty had owned claims
+there and had helped build the road.</p>
+<p>Montgomery paid $60,000 for the claims and took out $9,000,000
+before production costs exceeded his profits, when work was abandoned.</p>
+<p>During World War I, Montgomery sold the pipe, which had brought
+the water to Skidoo, to Standard Oil Company at a price far in excess
+of its cost. That was the end of Skidoo.</p>
+<p>More interesting to me than the fate of Skidoo was that of Blonde
+Betty and the traveling preacher, of which Shorty was reminded when
+we strolled by the crib in which Betty had lived.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Skagway Thompson, as fine a chap as ever drew a cork, died right
+over there in that shack and we decided he deserved a nice planting.
+Everybody liked Skagway. Only women around at that time were crib
+girls and they banked his grave with wild flowers and I got this sky
+pilot to say a few words.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was a young fellow, good looking and agreeable. I told him
+Skagway&rsquo;s friends thought it would be nice if one of the women in
+town would sing Skagway&rsquo;s favorite song. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s called &ldquo;When the Wedding
+Bells Are Ringing&rdquo;&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;and I hope you don&rsquo;t mind if it&rsquo;s not
+in the hymn books.&rsquo; I didn&rsquo;t tell him the girl who was going to sing it
+was Blonde Betty&mdash;a chippy&mdash;figuring he&rsquo;d be on his way before he
+found out. That gal could sing like a flock of larks and after the
+service the preacher barged up to me and said he wanted to meet Betty
+and would I introduce him.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_57">57</div>
+<p>&ldquo;There was no way out and besides, I figured what he didn&rsquo;t know
+wouldn&rsquo;t hurt him. He told her what a wonderful voice she had, how
+the song had touched him and hoped she would sing at one of his
+meetings.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Blonde Betty was pretty as curly ribbon and I was afraid every
+minute he was going to ask if he could call on her, so I horned in and
+said, &lsquo;Parson, excuse me, but I promised I would bring Miss Betty
+home right away.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So I took her arm and pulled her away.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You big-mouthed bum,&rsquo; Betty says when we were out of hearing.
+&lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t you attend to your own business? I know how to act.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Shorty pointed to a riot of wild flowers on the side of a hill across
+the gulch. &ldquo;The next day I saw her and the Parson picking flowers
+right over there. Of course he didn&rsquo;t know then what she was. After
+that I reckon he didn&rsquo;t give a dam&rsquo;. He chucked the preaching job and
+ran off with Betty. But maybe God went along. They got married and
+live over in Nevada and you couldn&rsquo;t find a happier family or a finer
+brood of children anywhere.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is no argument for sin, but this was a hell of a country in those
+days and you just couldn&rsquo;t always live by the Book.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On July 4, 1905 Shorty Harris made the strike which started the
+town of Harrisburg, now only a name on a signboard. A feud due to
+a partnership of curious origin, started immediately and is worth mention
+only because it confused historians of a later period who, gathering
+material after Shorty&rsquo;s death have given only the story of the feudist
+who survived him.</p>
+<p>Here is Shorty&rsquo;s version: &ldquo;I was trying to save distance by taking
+the Blackwater trail across Death Valley into the Panamint. I had been
+over the country and had seen a formation that looked good and was
+going back to look it over. The Blackwater trail is a wet trail and one
+of my burros sank in the ooze. I had just gotten her out when a fellow
+I&rsquo;d never seen before, came up. He said he was a stranger in the country
+and he wanted to get to Emigrant Springs where his two partners were
+waiting. He explained that the foreman at Furnace Creek had told him
+I had left only a short while before, but he might overtake me by
+hurrying, and I would show him the way. Then he asked if he could
+join me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I told him it was free country and nobody on the square was barred.
+When I reached my destination I showed him the trail to Emigrant
+Springs. I reckon I talked too much on the way over&mdash;maybe made
+him think I had a gold mountain. Anyway, he said he believed he would
+look around a little to see what he could find. I didn&rsquo;t even know his
+<span class="pb" id="Page_58">58</span>
+name and though it was against the unwritten code, he followed me.
+There wasn&rsquo;t anything I could do about it without trouble and I was
+looking for gold&mdash;not trouble.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In 15 minutes I had found gold. He was pecking around a short
+distance away and also found rock with color and claimed a half
+interest. It was then that I learned his name&mdash;Pete Auguerreberry and
+that his partners were Flynn and Cavanaugh. Wild Bill Corcoran had
+grubstaked me. I told Pete five partners were too many and we should
+agree upon a division point&mdash;each taking a full claim and he could
+have his choice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He refused and wanted half interest in both and nothing short of
+murder would have budged him. I went to Rhyolite for Bill Corcoran.
+He went for his partners. When we met, Corcoran had an offer to buy,
+sight unseen, from one of Schwab&rsquo;s agents. Everyone of us wanted to
+sell, except Pete who stood out for a fantastic price. His partners offered
+to give him a part of their share if he would accept the offer. Pete
+refused. He thought it was worth millions. Wild Bill organized a company
+and we started work.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For awhile it seemed the Harrisburg claims would prove to be good
+producers. In the end it was just another town on the map for Shorty.
+Futile years for Pete.</p>
+<p class="tb">Once I asked Shorty Harris how he obtained his grubstakes. &ldquo;Grubstakes,&rdquo;
+he answered, &ldquo;like gold, are where you find them. Once I was
+broke in Pioche, Nev., and couldn&rsquo;t find a grubstake anywhere. Somebody
+told me that a woman on a ranch a few miles out wanted a man for a
+few days&rsquo; work. I hoofed it out under a broiling sun, but when I got
+there, the lady said she had no job. I reckon she saw my disappointment
+and when her cat came up and began to mew, she told me the cat had
+an even dozen kittens and she would give me a dollar if I would take
+&rsquo;em down the road and kill &rsquo;em.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s a deal,&rsquo; I said. She got &rsquo;em in a sack and I started back to
+town. I intended to lug &rsquo;em a few miles away and turn &rsquo;em loose,
+because I haven&rsquo;t got the heart to kill anything.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A dozen kittens makes quite a load and I had to sit down pretty
+often to rest. A fellow in a two-horse wagon came along and offered
+me a ride. I picked up the sack and climbed in.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Cats, eh?&rsquo; the fellow said. &lsquo;They ought to bring a good price. I
+was in Colorado once. Rats and mice were taking the town. I had a cat.
+<span class="pb" id="Page_59">59</span>
+She would have a litter every three months. I had no trouble selling
+them cats for ten dollars apiece. Beat a gold mine.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There were plenty rats in Pioche and that sack of kittens went like
+hotcakes. One fellow didn&rsquo;t have any money and offered me a goat. I
+knew a fellow who wanted a goat. He lived on the same lot as I did.
+Name was Pete Swain.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pete was all lit up when I offered him the goat for fifty dollars. He
+peeled the money off his roll and took the goat into his shack. A few
+days later Pete came to his door and called me over and shoved a fifty
+dollar note into my hands. &lsquo;I just wanted you to see what that goat&rsquo;s
+doing,&rsquo; he said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I looked inside. The goat was pulling the cork out of a bottle of
+liquor with his teeth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;That goat&rsquo;s drunk as a boiled owl,&rsquo; Pete said. &lsquo;If I ever needed any
+proof that there&rsquo;s something in this idea of the transmigration of souls,
+that goat gives it. He&rsquo;s Jimmy, my old sidekick, who, I figgered was
+dead and buried.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Now listen,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Do you mean to tell me you actually believe
+that goat is your old pal, whom you drank with and played with and saw
+buried with your own eyes, right up there on the hill?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Exactly,&rsquo; Pete shouted, and he peeled off another fifty and gave it
+to me. So, you see, a grubstake, like gold, is where you find it.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_60">60</div>
+<h2 id="c12"><span class="small">Chapter X</span>
+<br />Greenwater&mdash;Last of the Boom Towns</h2>
+<p>Located on Black Mountain in the Funeral Range on the east side
+of Death Valley, Greenwater was the last boom town founded in the
+mad decade which followed Jim Butler&rsquo;s strike at Tonopah. Records
+show locations of mining claims in the district as early as 1884, but all
+were abandoned.</p>
+<p>The location notice of a &ldquo;gold and silver claim&rdquo; was filed in 1884 by
+Doc Trotter, a famous character of the desert, remembered both for
+his good fellowship and his burro&mdash;Honest John&mdash;a habitual thief of
+incredible cunning, &ldquo;Picked locks with baling wire....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The first location of a copper claim was made by Frank McAllister
+who, with a man named Cooper and Arthur Kunzie, may be credited
+with one of the West&rsquo;s most spectacular mining booms.</p>
+<p>In 1905 Phil Creaser and Fred Birney took samples of the Copper
+Blue Ledge and sent them to Patsy Clark, who was so impressed that
+he dispatched Joseph P. Harvey, a prominent mining engineer to look
+at the property. Harvey started from Daggett and had reached Cave
+Spring in the Avawatz Mountains when he was caught in a cloudburst
+and lost all his equipment. He returned to Daggett, secured a new
+outfit and this time reached Black Mountain, but was unable to locate
+the claims.</p>
+<p>Again Birney and Creaser contacted Clark and this time the mining
+magnate came to Rhyolite, ordered another examination of the property,
+giving his agent authority to buy. Upon the assay&rsquo;s showing, the
+claims were bought. Immediately Charles M. Schwab, August Heinze,
+Tasker L. Oddie, Borax Smith, W. A. Clark, and many other moguls
+of mining hurried to the scene or sent their agents. In their wake came
+gamblers, merchants, crib girls, soldiers of fortune, and thugs.</p>
+<p>$4,125,000 was paid for 2500 claims. Result&mdash;a hectic town with
+as many as 100 people a day pouring out of the canyons onto the
+barren, windy slope.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_61">61</div>
+<p>Noted mining engineers announced that Black Mountain was one
+huge deposit of copper with a thin overlay of rock, dirt, and gravel. &ldquo;It
+will make Butte&rsquo;s &lsquo;Richest Hill on Earth&rsquo; look like beggars&rsquo; pickings,&rdquo;
+they announced.</p>
+<p>Greenwater stocks sky-rocketed and so many people poured into
+the new camp that the town was moved two miles from the mines in
+order to take care of the growth which it was believed would soon make
+it a metropolis. Before pick and shovel had made more than a dent on
+the crust of Black Mountain, two newspapers, a bank, express lines,
+and a magazine were in operation.</p>
+<p>Here Shorty Harris missed another fortune only because his partner
+went on a drunk.</p>
+<p>Leaving Rhyolite, Shorty had induced Judge Decker, a convivial
+resident of Ballarat to furnish a grubstake to look over Black Mountain.
+He made several locations, erected his monuments, returned to Ballarat
+and gave them to Decker to be recorded.</p>
+<p>When the papers reached Ballarat with the news that the copper
+barons were bidding recklessly for Greenwater claims Shorty was broke
+again. Bursting into Chris Wicht&rsquo;s saloon, he shouted, &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the
+Judge?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Chris nodded toward the end of the bar where the Judge, swaying
+slightly, was waving his glass in lieu of a baton while leading the
+quartet in &ldquo;Sweet Adeline.&rdquo; Wedging through the crowd, Shorty touched
+the Judge&rsquo;s elbow: &ldquo;Lay off that cooking likker, Judge. It&rsquo;s Mum&rsquo;s Extra
+for us from now on.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yeh? How come?&rdquo; the Judge asked thickly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re worth a billion dollars,&rdquo; Shorty said. &ldquo;I staked out that
+whole dam&rsquo; mountain. Where&rsquo;re those location notices?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What location notices?&rdquo; Decker blinked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The ones I gave you to take to Independence.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With one hand the Judge steadied himself on the bar. With the
+other he fumbled through his pockets, finally producing a frayed batch
+of papers, covered with barroom doodling, but no recorder&rsquo;s receipt for
+the location notices. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll be damned,&rdquo; he muttered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So&rsquo;ll I,&rdquo; Shorty gulped.</p>
+<p>If Decker had recorded the notices both he and Shorty would have
+become rich through the sale of those claims.</p>
+<p>When laborers cleared the ground to begin work for Schwab, Patsy
+Clark, and others, they tore down the monuments containing the unrecorded
+notices.</p>
+<p>In a little cemetery on the gravel flats at Ballarat, lies Decker.</p>
+<p>Pleasantly refreshed with liquor one yawny afternoon he managed
+<span class="pb" id="Page_62">62</span>
+to have the last word in an argument with the constable, Henry Pietsch
+and went happily to his room. Later the constable thought of a way to
+win the argument and went to the Judge&rsquo;s cabin. A shot was heard and
+Pietsch came through the door with a smoking gun in his hand. Decker,
+he said, had started for a pistol in his dresser drawer. But Decker was
+found with a hole in his back, his spine severed. At Independence, the
+constable was acquitted for lack of evidence and returned to Ballarat to
+resume his duties, but was told that he might live longer somewhere
+else. Pietsch didn&rsquo;t argue this time and thus avoided a lynching. He left
+Ballarat and, I believe, was hanged for another murder.</p>
+<p>Among those who came early to Greenwater, none was more outstanding
+than a gorgeous creature with a wasp waist who stepped from
+the stage one day, patted her pompadour with jewelled fingers, gave
+the bustling town an approving glance. Then she turned to the bevy
+of blondes and brunettes she had brought. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a man&rsquo;s town, girls....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Bystanders were already eyeing the girls; their scarlet lips and the
+deep dark danger in their roving eyes.</p>
+<p>So Diamond Tooth Lil was welcomed to Greenwater and became
+important both in its business and social economy.</p>
+<p>It was agreed that Lil was a good fellow. Greenwater also learned
+that her word was good as her bond. She kept an orderly five dollar
+house and if anyone chose to break her rules of conduct, he ran afoul
+of her six-gun. Because she could fight like a jungle beast, she was
+also called Tiger Lil. Somewhere along the line, four of her upper teeth
+had been broken and in each of the replacements was set a diamond of
+first quality. As Greenwater prospered so did Diamond Tooth Lil.</p>
+<p>One day an exotic creature with a suggestion of Spanish-Creole and
+dark, compelling eyes dropped off the stage. She too had pretty girls
+and when the new bagnio had its grand opening, with champagne and
+imported orchestra, Diamond Tooth Lil sent a huge floral piece.</p>
+<p>A few nights later Lil was sitting in her parlor wondering where
+the men were. The girls were all banked around with folded hands.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe there&rsquo;s a celebration....&rdquo; A moment later a belated male
+barged in.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Willie, where&rsquo;s everybody?&rdquo; Lil asked.</p>
+<p>Willie flicked a look at the idle girls. &ldquo;Maybe,&rdquo; he announced,
+&ldquo;they&rsquo;re down at that new cut-rate menage.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cut-rate?&rdquo; Lil cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yeh. Three dollars.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A steely glint came into Diamond Tooth Lil&rsquo;s eyes.</p>
+<p>She tossed her cigarette into the cuspidor, went to her room, picked
+up her six-gun, saw that it was loaded and hurried to her rival&rsquo;s.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_63">63</div>
+<p>A rap on the door brought the dark beauty to the porch. &ldquo;Listen
+dearie,&rdquo; Diamond Tooth Lil began. &ldquo;This is a union town. I hear you&rsquo;re
+scabbing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The hot Latin temper flared. &ldquo;I run my business to suit myself....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you won&rsquo;t raise the price?&rdquo; asked Diamond Tooth Lil.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never!&rdquo; Suddenly the exotic one looked into hard steel and harder
+eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Okay. You&rsquo;re through. Start packing,&rdquo; ordered Lil.</p>
+<p>Something in the eyes behind the six-gun told the madam that
+surrender was wiser than a funeral and the scab house closed forever.</p>
+<p>A wayfarer in Greenwater announced that he was so low he could
+mount stilts and clear a snake&rsquo;s belly, but being broke, he could only
+sniff the liquor-scented air coming from Bill Waters&rsquo;s saloon and look
+wistfully at the bottles on the shelves. Then he noticed that Bill Waters
+was alone, polishing glasses. A sudden inspiration came and he sauntered
+in. &ldquo;Bill,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;gimme a drink....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Bill Waters was no meticulous interpreter of English and slid a glass
+down the bar. A bottle followed. The drinker filled the glass, poured
+it down an arid throat. &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; he called and started out.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hey&mdash;&rdquo; cried Bill Waters. &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t paid for that drink.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, I asked you to give me a drink....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yeh,&rdquo; Bill sneered. &ldquo;Well, brother, you&rsquo;d better pay.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Horse feathers&mdash;&rdquo; said the fellow and proceeded toward the door.</p>
+<p>Bill Waters picked up a double barrelled shotgun, pointed it at the
+departing guest and pulled the trigger. The jester fell, someone called
+the undertaker and the porter washed the floor.</p>
+<p>It looked bad for Bill. But lawyers solve such problems. Bill said
+he was joking and didn&rsquo;t know the gun was loaded. The answer satisfied
+the court and Bill returned to his glasses.</p>
+<p>For a few years Greenwater prospered. Then it was noticed that the
+incoming stages had empty seats. Bartenders had more time to polish
+glasses. &ldquo;The World&rsquo;s Biggest Copper Deposit&rdquo; which the world&rsquo;s
+greatest experts had assured the moguls lay under the mountain just
+wasn&rsquo;t there.</p>
+<p>Today there is barely a trace of Greenwater. A few bottles gleam
+in the sun. The wind sweeps over from Dante&rsquo;s View or up Dead
+Man&rsquo;s Canyon. The greasewood waves. The rotted leg of a pair of overalls
+protrudes from its covering of sand. A sunbaked shoe lies on its side.</p>
+<p>But somewhere under its crust is a case of champagne. Dan Modine,
+the freighter, buried it there one dark night over 40 years ago and was
+never able to find it.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_64">64</div>
+<h2 id="c13"><span class="small">Chapter XI</span>
+<br />The Amargosa Country</h2>
+<p>In Hellgate Pass I met Slim again, resting on the roadside, his burro
+browsing nearby. Slim, I may add here, already had a niche in Goldfield&rsquo;s
+hall of fame. He had walked into a gambling house one day
+broke, thirsty, nursing a hangover, and hoping to find a friend who
+would buy him a drink. Though it was a holiday and the place crowded,
+he saw no familiar face, but while waiting he noticed the cashier was
+busy collecting the winnings from the tables. He also noticed that in order
+to save the time it required to unlock the door of the cage, the cashier
+would dump the gold and silver coins on the shelf at his wicker window,
+then for safety&rsquo;s sake, shove it off to fall on the floor inside.</p>
+<p>Slim watched the procedure awhile and with a sudden bright idea,
+sauntered out. A few moments later he returned through an alley with
+an auger wrapped in a tow sack, crawled under the house and soon a
+stream of gold and silver was cascading into Slim&rsquo;s hat.</p>
+<p>A lookout at a table nearest the cage, hearing a strange metallic
+noise, went outside to investigate and peeking under the floor, saw Slim
+without being seen. It was just too good to keep. Stealthily moving away,
+he spread the news and half of Goldfield was gathered about when Slim,
+his pockets bulging with his loot, crawled out only to face a jeering,
+heckling crowd.</p>
+<p>Cornered like a rat in a cage, he couldn&rsquo;t run; he couldn&rsquo;t speak.
+He could only stand and grin and somehow the grin caught the crowd
+and instead of a lynching, Slim was handcuffed and led away and later
+the merciful judge who had been in the crowd declared Goldfield out
+of bounds for Slim and sent him on his way.</p>
+<p>At no other place in the world except Goldfield, with its craving for
+life&rsquo;s sunny side, could such an incident have occurred.</p>
+<p>After greetings Slim confided that he was en route to a certain
+canyon, the location of which he wouldn&rsquo;t even tell to his mother.
+<span class="pb" id="Page_65">65</span>
+There, not a cent less than $100,000,000 awaited him. No prospector
+worthy of the name ever bothers to mention a claim of less value. Not
+sure of the roads ahead, I asked him for directions.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better go down the valley,&rdquo; he advised, pointing to a small
+black cloud above Funeral Range. &ldquo;Regular cloudburst hatchery&mdash;these
+mountains.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At a sudden burst of thunder we flinched and at another the earth
+seemed to tremble. Forked lightning was stabbing the inky blackness
+and I expected to see the mountains fall apart. &ldquo;Something&rsquo;s got to
+give,&rdquo; Slim said. &ldquo;Look at that lightning ... no letup.&rdquo; Another
+roar rumbled and rolled over the valley. &ldquo;God&mdash;&rdquo; muttered Slim, &ldquo;I
+haven&rsquo;t prayed since I fell into a mine shaft full of rattlesnakes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As we watched the incessant play of lightning, Slim told me about
+his fall into the shaft: &ldquo;Arkansas Ben Brandt was working about 100
+yards away. Deaf as a lamp post, Ben is, but I kept praying and hollering
+and just when I&rsquo;d given up, here comes a rope. You can argue with
+me all day but you can&rsquo;t make me believe the Lord didn&rsquo;t unstop old
+Ben&rsquo;s ears.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Slim gave me a final warning. &ldquo;Take the road over the mountain
+when you come to the Shoshone sign. When you get there be sure to
+see Charlie before you go any farther.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At every water hole where prospectors were gathered I&rsquo;d heard
+someone tell someone else to see Charlie. At Furnace Creek I&rsquo;d heard
+the vice president of the Borax Company tell an official of the Santa Fe
+railroad to see Charlie and only an hour before I met Slim I had stopped
+to give a tire patch to a young miner with a flat. While I waited to see
+that the patch stuck, I learned he was on his way to consult Charlie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My helper,&rdquo; he confided, &ldquo;jumped my claim after he learned I
+hadn&rsquo;t done last year&rsquo;s assessment work. That&rsquo;s legal if a fellow&rsquo;s a skunk
+but when he stole my wife and chased me off with my own shotgun,
+bigod&mdash;that&rsquo;s different.&rdquo; I suggested a lawyer. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll see Charlie first....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Naturally I became curious about this Charlie, who seemed to be
+a combination of Father Confessor and the Caliph Haroun Alraschid
+to all the desert. &ldquo;Just who is Charlie?&rdquo; I asked Slim.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He runs the store at Shoshone. Tell him I&rsquo;ll be down soon. I want
+him to handle my deal.&rdquo; He slapped his burro and we parted&mdash;he for
+his $100,000,000, I to leave the country. Watching the spring in his
+step a moment, I got into my car and knew at last the why of those
+dark alluring canyons that ran up from the hungry land and hid in the
+hills. I knew why there are riches that nothing can take away and why
+rainbows swing low in the sky. The good God had made them so that
+fellows like Slim could climb one and ride.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_66">66</div>
+<p>Driving along I found myself trying to appraise the endless waste.
+Was it a blunder of creation, hell&rsquo;s front yard or God&rsquo;s back stairs? It
+was easy to understand the appeal of vast distances, of desert dawns and
+desert nights but what was it that made men &ldquo;go desert&rdquo;?</p>
+<p>The answer was becoming clearer. Fellows like Slim had found
+God in a snake hole, or if you prefer&mdash;a way of life patterned with
+infinite precision to their needs. It is easy enough to tear into scraps,
+another&rsquo;s formula for happiness and recommend your own but that is
+an egotism that only the fool will flaunt and I began to suspect that the
+Slims and the Shortys had found a freedom for which millions in the
+tired world Outside vainly struggled and slowly died.</p>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t0">&ldquo;I wanted the gold, and I got it&mdash;</p>
+<p class="t">Came out with a fortune last fall&mdash;</p>
+<p class="t0">Yet somehow life&rsquo;s not what I thought it,</p>
+<p class="t">And somehow the gold isn&rsquo;t all.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t0">It grips you like some kinds of sinning;</p>
+<p class="t">It twists you from foe to a friend;</p>
+<p class="t0">It seems it&rsquo;s been since the beginning;</p>
+<p class="t">It seems it will be to the end.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="lr">&mdash;<i>Robert W. Service.</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>Rounding a sharp turn in the road that led over and around a hill
+jutting out from a mountain of black malpai, I saw a sign: &ldquo;Shoshone&rdquo;
+and just beyond, a little settlement almost hidden in a thicket of mesquite.
+A sign on a weather-beaten ramshackle building read, &ldquo;Store.&rdquo; A
+few listing shacks on a naked flat. An abandoned tent house, its torn
+canvas top whipping the rafters in the wind. Whirlwinds spiraling
+along dry washes to vanish in hummocks of sand.</p>
+<p>The presence of three or four prospectors strung along a slab bench
+either staring at the ground at their feet or the brown bare mountains,
+only emphasized the depressing solitude and I decided if I had to choose
+between hell and Shoshone I&rsquo;d take hell.</p>
+<p>Reaching the store through deep dust, I guessed correctly that the
+big fellow giving me an appraising look was Charlie. He was slow in
+his movements, slow in his speech and I had the feeling that his keen,
+calm eyes had already counted the number of buttons on my shirt and
+the eyelets in my shoes. I asked about the road to Baker.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Washed out. Won&rsquo;t be open for two weeks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Two weeks?&rdquo; I gasped. &ldquo;Long enough to kill a fellow, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s a little cemetery handy. Just up the gulch.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_67">67</div>
+<p>Impulsively I thrust out my hand. &ldquo;Shake. You win. Now that we
+understand each other, have you a cabin for rent for these two weeks?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but you&rsquo;d better take it longer,&rdquo; he chuckled. &ldquo;In two weeks
+you&rsquo;ll be a native and won&rsquo;t want to get out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The showing of the cabin was delayed by a lanky individual who
+was pawing over a pile of shoes. &ldquo;Charlie, soles on my shoes are worn
+through. These any good?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not worth a dam&rsquo;,&rdquo; Charlie said. He picked up hammer and nails,
+handed them to the lanky one. &ldquo;Some old tires outside. Cut off a piece
+and tack it on. I&rsquo;ll have some good shoes next time you&rsquo;re in.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A miner in an ancient pickup stopped for gas. As Brown filled the
+tank he noticed a tire dangerously worn. &ldquo;Blackie, you need a new
+casing to get across Death Valley.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;These&rsquo;ll do,&rdquo; Blackie answered as he dug into all his pockets, paid
+for the gas and got into the car.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait a minute,&rdquo; Brown said and in a moment he was rolling a
+new tire out, lifting it to the bed of the pickup. He handed Blackie a
+new tube. &ldquo;If you use them, pay me. If you don&rsquo;t, bring &rsquo;em back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Blackie regarded him a moment. &ldquo;How&rsquo;d you know I was broke?&rdquo;
+he grinned, and chugged away.</p>
+<p>A man stopped a truck in front of the door, came in and asked
+how far it was to Furnace Creek. Charlie looked him over, then glanced
+at the truck. &ldquo;Fifty-eight miles the short way. Nearly 80 the other.
+You&rsquo;ll have to take the long way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; the fellow bristled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your load is too high for the underpass on the short route. Road&rsquo;s
+washed out anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The man frowned and turned to go.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait a minute,&rdquo; Charlie called. He reached for a sack of flour,
+laid it on a counter. Then he stood a slab of bacon on its edge and
+cut off a chunk. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll stop at Bradbury Well&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t stop nowhere,&rdquo; the truckman said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have to. Your radiator will be boiling.&rdquo; He got a carton,
+put the flour and bacon in it and reaching on a shelf behind, got coffee,
+sugar, and canned milk and put these in. &ldquo;Old Dobe Charlie Nels is
+camped there. Poor old fellow hasn&rsquo;t been in for two weeks....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The man looked at Charlie, uncertain. &ldquo;You want me to drop it off,
+huh?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Charlie said and lugging the carton to the truck, he shoved
+it in.</p>
+<p>With squinted eyes the driver watched. &ldquo;Mister, I&rsquo;ll surely fill up
+here on my way back,&rdquo; and with a friendly wave, climbed into his cab
+<span class="pb" id="Page_68">68</span>
+and I began to understand why all over the desert I&rsquo;d heard of Charlie.</p>
+<p>The cabin assigned me was the usual box type, shaded by the overhanging
+branches of a screwbean mesquite.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cabin&rsquo;s not much,&rdquo; Charlie said, &ldquo;but you&rsquo;ll have a Beauty Rest
+mattress to sleep on. My wife says folks&rsquo;ll put up with most anything
+if they have a good bed.&rdquo; He looked the room over and I noticed that
+nothing escaped him. Wood and kindling. Oil in the lamp. Water in
+the pitcher&mdash;an ornate vessel with enormous roses edged with gilt. He
+opened a closet door, saw that the matching vessel was in place and
+went out. After arranging my belongings, with time to kill, I returned
+to the store, hoping to learn something about nearby trails.</p>
+<p>A short woman who preceded me slammed a can of coffee on the
+counter, removed her long cigarette holder, blew a ring of smoke at
+the ceiling and asked Charlie where he got the coffee. He told her that
+it came in a shipment.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well bigod, you send it back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Charlie laughed and turned to me: &ldquo;This is Myra Benson. You
+want to stay on the good side of Myra. She has charge of the dining
+room.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>My remark that good coffee was my early morning weakness led to
+an invitation to sample her brew. &ldquo;Mine too,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The pot&rsquo;s on
+the stove before daylight, if you&rsquo;re up that early.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I soon discovered that Myra&rsquo;s language was just a bit of color Death
+Valley imparts to speech, for she was deeply religious if not in all its
+forms, in all of its essentials and the occasional use of a two-fisted
+phrase did not in the least detract from the eternal feminine of one of
+Death Valley&rsquo;s most remarkable women.</p>
+<p>Guided by the light in her kitchen, I joined her the next morning
+while Shoshone still slept, and over a delicious cup learned something
+about people and places.</p>
+<p>The man with the wide Stetson was Dan Modine, deputy sheriff.
+Liked poker. The quiet, squat fellow with the blue pop eyes was Billy
+de Von. &ldquo;College man. Works on the roads. Taught in the University
+of Mexico before he came here. Siberian Red? Oh, that&rsquo;s Ernie Huhn.
+No place on Godamighty&rsquo;s earth he hasn&rsquo;t been. As soon bet $1000
+as two bits on a pair of jacks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The tall thin fellow they called Sam? Must be Sam Flake. Here
+before Noah built the ark.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Knowing that Mormons had pioneered in the area, I was curious
+about an undersized man pushing an oversize baby carriage loaded
+with infants and a dozen youngsters trailing him. &ldquo;Does he happen
+to be one of the Faithful who has clung to his wives?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_69">69</div>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s Eddie Main,&rdquo; Myra laughed. &ldquo;Bachelor. Just loves kids. He
+was born in San Francisco in the days when a nickel just wasn&rsquo;t counted
+unless it had a dime alongside. His folks sent him to New York to be
+educated. Eddie didn&rsquo;t like it. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a nickel town,&rsquo; Eddie said. &lsquo;Cheapest
+hole on earth.&rsquo; He came to the desert and the desert took him over. When
+he&rsquo;s not hauling kids around he&rsquo;s reading. Don&rsquo;t get out on a limb in an
+argument with Eddie. You&rsquo;ll lose sure. Every now and then Eddie goes
+East for a vacation. It&rsquo;s awful on the mothers. They have to take care of
+their own children and the children want Eddie.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who is Hank, the fellow that came in with the pickup Ford?&rdquo; I
+asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Our bootlegger. Comes Wednesdays and Saturdays. Regular as a
+bread route. Always tell when he&rsquo;s due. Bench is crowded. Didn&rsquo;t you
+notice the tarpaulin over his truck? Always two kegs and a sack of
+empty pints and quarts. Rough roads here. Siphons out what you want.
+Death Valley Scotty? Around yesterday. Lit up like a barn afire.&rdquo; The
+short man with the black whiskers was Henry Ashford who, with his
+brothers Harold and Rudolph owned the Ashford mine.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How does such a little store in a place like this make a living for
+the Browns?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wonder myself, at times,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Everybody around here takes
+their troubles to Charlie or Stella. Maybe you noticed their home&mdash;the
+cottage with the screen porch a few steps from the store. Stella was telling
+me yesterday she needed a new carpet for her living room. I said,
+&lsquo;I&rsquo;m not surprised. You&rsquo;re running a nursery, emergency hospital, and a
+domestic relations court.&rsquo; Sometimes young couples find their marriage
+going on the rocks. The woman goes to Stella to get the kinks out. As
+for Charlie, if you&rsquo;re around long enough you&rsquo;ll see him most every
+morning strolling over to the shacks in the jungle or up to the dugouts
+in Dublin Gulch. He thinks nobody knows what he&rsquo;s doing or maybe
+they figure he&rsquo;s just taking a walk. I know. Some of these old fellows are
+always in a bad way. Just last week Charlie came in here and told me
+to send something a sick man could eat over to old Jim. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll have to take
+him to the hospital soon as I can get my car ready,&rsquo; he said. Three hundred
+miles&mdash;that trip.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And there&rsquo;s Phil. You&rsquo;ll see him around. Fine steady chap. Lost his
+job when the mine he worked in shut down. Long as he was working he
+was the first in the dining room when I opened the door. He began to
+miss a breakfast, then a dinner, and finally he didn&rsquo;t show up at all. I
+supposed he was cooking his own and didn&rsquo;t mention it. Kept his chin
+up. You could hear him laughing loud as anybody on the bench, but
+<span class="pb" id="Page_70">70</span>
+Charlie noticed that once a day Phil would follow his nose over into the
+mesquite where somebody was sure to share a mulligan stew.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One day when Phil was sitting alone on the woodpile just outside
+my kitchen, Charlie sat down beside him. They didn&rsquo;t know I was there.
+&lsquo;Phil,&rsquo; Charlie says, &lsquo;the ditch that carries the runoff up at the spring
+needs widening. Could you spare a few days to put it in shape?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Phil left that bench running, got a pick and shovel and went singing
+up the road and to this day he doesn&rsquo;t know that Charlie just created
+that job so he could eat.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I mentioned the fellow with black hair and blue eyes. &ldquo;He complained
+of rheumatism and slapped his knees a lot.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s Dutch Barr. It isn&rsquo;t rheumatism. Just a sign he&rsquo;s going
+on a drunk.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The lanky man with the blond eyebrows and sombre face which
+lighted so easily to laugh, was Whitey Bill McGarn. &ldquo;... Never had
+a worry in his life....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I learned also that the mountain of malpai which lifts above Shoshone
+was a burial place for a race of Indians antedating the Piutes and
+Shoshones. &ldquo;They buried their dead in a crouching position on their
+knees, elbows bent, hands at their ears. Old Nancy, who was Sam Yundt&rsquo;s
+squaw wife before he got rich, says they were buried that way so they
+would be ready to go quick when the Great Spirit called.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The first rose of dawn was in the sky when I left Myra. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll
+have time enough to look around before breakfast,&rdquo; she told me and
+recommended a view of the valley from the flat-topped mesa above my
+cabin. &ldquo;You can reach the top by climbing up a gully and holding on to
+the greasewood. You can see the dugouts in Dublin Gulch too. Some real
+old timers live there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A sweeping view of the little valley rewarded the climb.</p>
+<p>Below, Shoshone lay, tucked away in the mesquite. No honking
+horns, no clanging cars. No swollen ankles dragging muted chains to
+bench or counter, desk or machine. Soon faint spirals of smoke leaned
+from the shanties. Shoshone was awakening. It would wash its face on a
+slab bench, eat its bacon and eggs, and somebody would go out to look
+for two million dollars.</p>
+<p>After breakfast, I joined the old timers on the bench. &ldquo;No&mdash;nothing
+exciting happens around here,&rdquo; Joe Ryan told me and stopped whittling
+to look at a car coming up the road. A moment later the car stopped at
+the gas pump and three smartly tailored men stepped out. I heard one
+say, &ldquo;Odd looking lot on that bench, aren&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; Then Joe said to the
+fellow at his side, &ldquo;Queer looking birds, ain&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How much is gas?&rdquo; one of the tourists asked.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_71">71</div>
+<p>&ldquo;Thirty cents,&rdquo; Charlie said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s only 18 in the city,&rdquo; the man flared. &ldquo;How far is it to the
+next gas?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Charlie told him, and Big Dan sitting beside me muttered: &ldquo;Dam&rsquo;
+fool&rsquo;ll pay 50 cents up there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The driver climbed into the car and Charlie asked if he had plenty
+of water.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A gallon can full....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not enough,&rdquo; Charlie warned.</p>
+<p>A fellow in the back seat spoke, &ldquo;Aw, go on. He wants to sell a
+canteen....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As the car pulled out, Joe called to Charlie: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re sold out of
+canteens, ain&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. But I was going to give him one of those old five gallon cans
+on the dump.&rdquo; He went inside and Joe Ryan said, &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t get far on a
+gallon of water.&rdquo; He waved his knife toward the little cemetery at the
+mouth of the gulch. &ldquo;Lot of smart Alecs like him up there, that Charlie
+dragged in offa the desert.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was five days almost to the hour when Ann Cowboy, a Piute
+squaw came to the store with an Indian boy who couldn&rsquo;t speak
+English; nodded at the boy and said to Charlie: &ldquo;Him see....&rdquo; She
+pointed to the big black mountain of malpai above Shoshone, whirled
+her finger in a circle, shot it this way and that, then patted the floor.
+&ldquo;You savvy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her dark eyes watched Charlie&rsquo;s and when she had finished Charlie
+called Joe Ryan and together they went across the road, climbed into
+a pickup truck and left in a hurry. Even I understood that somebody on
+the other side of that mountain was in trouble, but I had no idea that in
+three or four hours the pickup would return with a cadaver under a
+tarpaulin and a thirst-crazed survivor whose distorted features bore little
+resemblance to those of man.</p>
+<p>Big Dan helped lift the victim from the truck. &ldquo;There were three,&rdquo;
+Dan said. &ldquo;Where is the other fellow?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We looked all over,&rdquo; Joe shrugged.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The one that&rsquo;s missing,&rdquo; Dan said, &ldquo;is the fellow that griped about
+the canteen. I remember his black hair.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They carried the still-living man over to Charlie&rsquo;s house and left
+him to the ministrations of the capable Stella. Charlie returned to the
+store, got a pick and shovel from a rack, handed one to Ben Brandt and
+one to Cranky Casey. Not a word was spoken to them. They took the
+tools and started toward the little cemetery at the mouth of Dublin
+Gulch.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_72">72</div>
+<p>I joined Dan on the bench. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Dan said, &ldquo;they saved the price
+of a canteen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="tb">Two spinsters&mdash;teachers of zoology in a fashionable eastern school
+for girls&mdash;came in search of a place they called Metbury Springs. Brown
+told them there were no such springs in the Death Valley region. Obviously
+disappointed, one produced a map, spread it on the counter, ran
+her finger over a maze of notes and looking up asked what sort of rats
+lived about Shoshone. Charlie told them that very few rats survived their
+natural enemies and were seldom seen.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do they look like?&rdquo; the teacher asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just regular rats,&rdquo; Charlie told her.</p>
+<p>Again she consulted her notes. &ldquo;Do you mean to say the only rat
+you&rsquo;ve seen here is <i>Mus decumanus</i>?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mus who?&rdquo; Charlie asked. &ldquo;Only rats around here besides the two-legged
+kind are just plain everyday rats.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The ladies gathered up their papers, went outside, looked over the
+hills, consulted their maps, and returned to Brown. &ldquo;Sir, this is Metbury
+Spring,&rdquo; one announced, &ldquo;and for your own information we may add
+that in no other place in the world is there a rat like the one you have
+here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The amazing feature of this incident is that it is true. The rats in
+some unexplained way had disappeared.</p>
+<p>The spinsters remained for weeks but failed to find the specimen
+they sought, but Charlie learned that the first man known to have settled
+at Shoshone was a man named Brown and Shoshone&rsquo;s first name was
+Metbury Spring.</p>
+<p class="tb">Death came to Shoshone that week-end. George Hoagland, prospector,
+reached Trail&rsquo;s End. Charlie announced the news to the bench
+and asked for volunteers to dig the grave. Bob Johnson, another prospector,
+jumped up. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll help.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The others gave Bob a quick look and exchanged slow ones with
+each other, because it was known that Bob had not liked Hoagland.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been in lots of deals with that bastard,&rdquo; he had often said. &ldquo;Came
+out loser every time. Always left himself a hole to wiggle out of.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Right or wrong, Bob&rsquo;s opinion was shared by many. Herman Jones
+glanced after Bob, now going for a pick and shovel. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s sure white
+of Bob, forgetting his grudge,&rdquo; Herman said and all Shoshone approved.</p>
+<p>I joined the little group that filed up to the cemetery at the mouth
+of the gulch for the graveside ceremony. We stood about waiting for
+the box that contained all there was of George.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_73">73</div>
+<p>They take death on the desert just as they do any other grim fact
+of nature. They talked of George and the hard, chalky earth Bob had
+to dig through in the hot sun. There were mild arguments about whose
+bones lay under this or that unmarked grave. &ldquo;Dad Fairbanks brought
+that fellow in....&rdquo; &ldquo;No such thing. That&rsquo;s Tillie Younger&mdash;member
+of Jesse James&rsquo;s gang. I helped bury him....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Presently there was a stir and I saw Charlie over where the women
+were. He had another chore and was doing it because there was no one
+else to do it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Usually reads a coupla verses,&rdquo; Joe Ryan told me. &ldquo;But somebody
+stole the only Bible in Shoshone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The box was lowered, the grave filled and Charlie stepped forward.
+He held his hat well up in front of his chest and I suspected that he
+had a few notes pasted in the hat. Those about were listening intently
+as people will to one who has something to say and says it in a few
+words.</p>
+<p>Suddenly I was conscious of mumbling and the tramping of earth
+and seeing Brown flick a glance out of the corner of his eye toward the
+disturbing sound, I turned to see Bob Johnson jumping up and down on
+the earth that filled the grave&mdash;careful to miss no inch of it. When he
+had tamped it sufficiently he stepped aside and muttered angrily: &ldquo;Now
+dam&rsquo; you&mdash;let&rsquo;s see you wiggle out of this hole!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Yet, when the hills are covered with wild flowers one may see on
+the unsodded graves of the little cemetery a bottle or a tin can filled
+with sun cups or baby blue eyes and in the dust the tracks of a hobnailed
+shoe.</p>
+<p>I soon discovered the bench was more than a slab of wood. It was
+a state of Hallelujah. For the most part those who gathered there were
+a silent lot, but as one unshaven ancient told me, &ldquo;Too damned much
+talk in the world. Two-three words are plenty&mdash;like yes, naw, and dam&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+Some of them had beaten trails from Crede or Cripple Creek, Virginia
+City or Bodie. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a clean life and clean money,&rdquo; was an expression
+that ran like a formula through their conversation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, few keep the money they get,&rdquo; Joe Ryan said. &ldquo;Jack
+Morissey couldn&rsquo;t read or write. He struck it rich. Bought a diamond-studded
+watch and couldn&rsquo;t even tell the time of day. Went to Europe;
+hit all the high spots; came back and died in the poor house. But he
+had his fun, which makes more sense than what Nat Crede did. He
+hit it rich. Built a town and a palace. Then blew his brains out and left
+all his millions to a Los Angeles foundling.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>One oldster remembered Eilly Orrum of Virginia City. &ldquo;She had
+followed the covered wagons and made a living washing our clothes,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_74">74</span>
+but she got into our hearts. Everybody liked her. Some say she forgot
+to get a divorce from her second husband before she married Sandy
+Bowers. Nobody blamed her. She and Sandy ran a beanery. Eilly would
+feed anybody on the cuff. John Rodgers ran up a board bill and couldn&rsquo;t
+pay it. He had a few shares in a no-count claim and talked Eilly into
+taking the shares to settle the bill.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Within two weeks Eilly was getting $20,000 a month from that
+deal. It wasn&rsquo;t long before she was giggling happily and telling everybody
+she didn&rsquo;t see how folks could live on less than $100,000 a year.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Julia Bulette? Ran a snooty fancy house. But she taught Virginia
+City how to eat and what, and soon the rich fellows wouldn&rsquo;t stand for
+anything except the world&rsquo;s best foods.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes, everybody knew Old Virginny. Gave the town its name.
+Always drunk. Discovered the Ophir. Swapped it for a mustang pony
+and a pint of likker to old Pancake Comstock. When he sobered up
+he discovered the pony was blind. Pancake swapped an eighth interest
+in the Ophir to a Mexican, Gabriel Maldonado, for two burros. The
+Mexican took out $6,000,000. Pancake was quite a lady-killer. Ran
+away with a miner&rsquo;s wife. Fellow was glad to get rid of her, but decided
+he&rsquo;d beat hell out of Pancake. Found him in new diggings nearby
+and jumped him. &lsquo;You don&rsquo;t want her,&rsquo; Pancake says. &lsquo;Be reasonable.
+I&rsquo;ll buy her.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They haggled awhile and the fellow agreed to accept $50 and a
+plug horse. He took the money and started for the horse.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Wait a minute,&rsquo; Pancake says, &lsquo;I want a bill of sale,&rsquo; and wrote it
+out on the spot, and made the fellow sign it. Didn&rsquo;t keep her long
+though. She ran away with a tramp fiddler. The Comstock Lode produced
+over a billion dollars. He might have had a fifth of that. Just too
+smart for his own good. Finally paid the price. Found him on the trail
+one day. Brains blowed out. Suicide.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dobe Charlie Nels was at Bodie, rendezvous of the toughest of the
+bad men when the United States Hotel rented its rooms in six-hour
+shifts and guests were awakened at the end of that period to make
+places for others. He recalled Eleanor Dumont, whose deft fingers
+dealt four kings to the unwary and four aces to herself. Smitten lovers
+had shot it out for her favors on the Mother Lode and on the Comstock,
+but when life and love still were fair, fate played a scurvy trick
+on the beauteous Eleanor. The shadow of a little down began to show
+on her lip and darkened with the years and so she became Madame
+Moustache. &ldquo;She just got tired living and one night she went outside,
+swallowed a little pellet and passed the deal to God.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But the charmers of Bodie and its bad men and the millions its hills
+<span class="pb" id="Page_75">75</span>
+produced were not so deeply etched on his memory as the job he lost
+because he did it well. Hungry and broke when he arrived he took the
+first job offered&mdash;stacking cord wood.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was a job I really knew. The boss drove stakes 4&times;8 feet alongside
+a mountain of cut wood. I figured I had a long job. He left and
+I took pains to make every cord level on top, sides even. When the
+boss came back he blew up, kicked over my piles and wanted to know
+if I was trying to ruin him. &lsquo;If you&rsquo;d picked out a few crooked sticks
+and crossed a few straight ones, you could have made a cord with half
+the wood. Get out and don&rsquo;t come back.&rsquo;&rdquo; Charlie also had a story of
+a memorable night.</p>
+<p>A bartender in one of Bodie&rsquo;s better saloons was putting his stock
+in order after a busy night when three celebrants in swallow tails and
+toppers came unsteadily through the doors. The two on the outside
+were gallantly steadying the one in the center as they led him to the
+bar. The bartender smiled understandingly when, coming for their
+orders, he noticed the center man&rsquo;s head was pillowed on his arms over
+the bar, his topper lying on its side in front of his face. Recalling that
+the fellow had consumed often and eagerly but had paid for none in
+an earlier session, he nodded at the silent one: &ldquo;Shall I count him out?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no. Bill&rsquo;s buying this time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The drinks served, the bartender left to attend another late patron
+and moments passed before he returned to find Bill just as he had left
+him, but alone&mdash;his drink untouched. He tapped Bill&rsquo;s shoulder and
+asked payment for the drinks. When three taps and three demands
+brought no answer, he picked up a bung starter; went around the
+counter, seized Bill by the shoulder, wheeled him around only to discover
+that Bill was dead. Startled and panicky, the bartender now ran
+to the door, saw Bill&rsquo;s friends weaving up the street and ran after them,
+told them excitedly that Bill had croaked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; one said thickly. &ldquo;Bill&rsquo;s ticker jammed in our room an hour
+ago. His last words were, &lsquo;Fellows, I want you to have a drink on me.&rsquo;
+Couldn&rsquo;t refuse old Bill&rsquo;s last request.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>When Dobe Charlie had finished this story he turned to a clear-eyed
+ancient standing nearby. &ldquo;Jim, I reckon you&rsquo;d call me a Johnny-come-lately
+since you were a Forty-Niner.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; Jim said. &ldquo;I was 12 when I came to Hangtown. I remember
+a fellow they called Wheelbarrow John, because he made a better
+wheelbarrow than anyone else. He saved $3000 and went back East.
+He was John Studebaker. Made wagons first. Then autos.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Young fellow named Phil Armour came. No luck. Pulled out. He
+did all right in Chicago though. Founded Armour Company.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_76">76</div>
+<p>&ldquo;Did I ever tell you about the Digger Ounce? No? Well, it&rsquo;s history.
+The Digger Indians didn&rsquo;t know what gold was. Actually they&rsquo;d been
+throwing nuggets at rabbits and couldn&rsquo;t believe their eyes when they
+saw miners exchange the same stuff for food and clothing at the store.
+The Indians had been getting it along the stream beds for ages. So
+they came in with their buckskin loin bags full of it. The merchant took
+it all right, but when he balanced his scales, he used a weight that gave
+the Digger only one dollar for every five he was entitled to. Then the
+Indian had to pay three prices for everything he bought. One miner
+loafing around the store, followed the Diggers one day, learned where
+they were getting it and cleaned up $40,000 in no time. That&rsquo;s history
+too.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Crooked merchants used the same trick on drunken whites and
+anybody else who didn&rsquo;t keep their eyes open. So the Digger Ounce
+became a byword all along the Mother Lode.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But of all the stories about the Comstock this fine old gentleman told
+us, I like best one about Joe Plato. Young, strong, and handsome as
+Apollo, Joe craved a fling after months of toil in the gulches with no
+sight of woman other than the flat-faced Washoe squaws.</p>
+<p>In San Francisco Joe saw a big red apple and he wanted it. A
+breath-taking girl sold him the apple and he wanted her. He acquired
+the girl also. His gambols over, Joe handed her five shares of ten he
+owned in a Comstock claim. &lsquo;A little token,&rsquo; he grinned, never dreaming
+the beautiful wanton had a heart and loved him madly. So he
+forgot her. She didn&rsquo;t forget Joe.</p>
+<p>Months later the ten shares were worth on the market $1,000,000.
+Joe remembered then. &lsquo;Too much for a girl like that.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>To beat the news and retrieve the stock, he braved Sierra storms,
+found her. In the battle of wits she played her cards superbly. &ldquo;Of
+course,&rdquo; she said at last, &ldquo;... if we were married....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So the beaten Joe faced the preacher.</p>
+<p>When Joe Plato died she took her millions to San Francisco, married
+a rich merchant, became a social leader and the mother of nabobs.</p>
+<p class="tb">One morning at breakfast Myra informed me that I could get to
+Bradbury Well, a famous landmark on the road to Death Valley. To
+break the routine, I went. The route leads over Salsbury Pass, named
+for Jack Salsbury&mdash;a congenital promoter who was forever hunting
+something to promote. He had made and lost fortunes in cattle, lumber,
+and mines and for a while lived at Shoshone.</p>
+<p>In a ravine near Bradbury Well were two or three dugouts. In one
+was the ubiquitous Rocky Mountain George&mdash;lean, seamed, and soft
+<span class="pb" id="Page_77">77</span>
+voiced. On the box he used for a table lay a letter mailed in Denver
+and bearing this address: &ldquo;Rocky Mountain George, Nevada.&rdquo; Known
+all over the gold belt, a dozen postmasters had sent it from town to
+town and now it had caught up with George.</p>
+<p>Meeting George a few weeks later in Beatty I recalled our meeting.
+He hadn&rsquo;t shaved in a week and his torn overalls were covered with
+grime. A well-tailored gentleman came out of the hotel across the
+street and stepped into a smart car. &ldquo;Hey, Jim&mdash;&rdquo; George called. &ldquo;Come
+over here a minute....&rdquo; The man left his car and walked over. &ldquo;Jim,
+I want you to meet my friend....&rdquo; Jim and I shook hands. &ldquo;Jim&rsquo;s our
+governor,&rdquo; George added and I looked again at Nevada&rsquo;s Governor
+James Scrugham, later its U. S. Senator. For an hour he and George
+talked of canyons in which, they decided, somebody would find a
+billion dollars and I decided Democracy was safe on the desert.</p>
+<p>Walking up the wash from George&rsquo;s dugout I was surprised to see
+a slim blonde with blue eyes and a nice smile. Obviously she had just
+left her stove, for she had a steaming pot of coffee in her hand. I made
+some inane remark about the beauty of the morning.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nearly always like this,&rdquo; she said and after a moment I was
+sitting on the bench outside the dugout sipping coffee. I learned that
+her name was Helen. &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t I try prospecting? I&rsquo;ve nothing
+to lose. I had a job clerking, but I just couldn&rsquo;t scrimp enough to pay
+for medicine and the doctors&rsquo; bills.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That and the telltale spot on her cheek seemed reason enough for
+her presence and, as she explained, &ldquo;I might make a strike.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Later in Beatty, I noticed a small crowd about the office of Judge
+W. B. Gray, Beatty&rsquo;s marrying Justice, who was also interested in
+mines. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the riot?&rdquo; I asked Rocky Mountain George, who was
+whittling on the bench beside me. &ldquo;Helen made a big strike,&rdquo; he told
+me and I hurried over and met her coming out&mdash;radiant and excited.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just heard of your strike,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Where did you make it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Right in that wash,&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;He came along one day and&mdash;well,
+we just got to liking each other and&mdash;&rdquo; She paused to introduce me to a
+good looking clean-cut fellow and added: &ldquo;So we just up and married.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The population of Beatty had so changed in one generation that in
+1949 when the town wanted to put on a celebration, not a citizen could
+be found who knew Beatty&rsquo;s first name. Finally a former acquaintance
+was located at Long Beach who advised a booster group that the
+name of its founder was William Martin Beatty. The gentleman is
+mistaken. Beatty&rsquo;s first name was Montelius and was called Monte by
+all old timers.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_78">78</div>
+<p>A feature of social life in Shoshone was the Snake House&mdash;an unbelievable
+structure made of shook from apple crates, scraps of corrugated
+iron found in the dump, tin cut from oil cans, and cardboard
+from packing cartons, which because of scant rainfall, served almost
+as well as wood or iron.</p>
+<p>A fellow comes in from the hills, craves relaxation and finds it in
+the Snake House. Though he never plays poker, Eddie Main who lived
+a few yards away was induced to function as a sort of Managing Director,
+to see that the game remained a gentleman&rsquo;s game.</p>
+<p>Inside, swinging from the roof is a Coleman lantern and under it a
+big round table covered with a blanket stretched tight and tacked under
+the edges. A rack of chips. Chairs for players and kegs and beer crates
+for spectators. A stove in the corner furnishes heat when needed. If
+you limit your poker to penny ante, the game is not for you. I have
+seen more than $1000 in the pots and large bets are the rule.</p>
+<p>One night Sam Flake who has been in Death Valley country longer
+than any living man, joined the game. Sam, a student of poker, ran
+afoul of four queens and went home broke. The next day as he worked
+in a mine tunnel, Sam was holding a post mortem over his disaster. He
+went over his play point by point. Like many a desert man used to solitude,
+Sam occasionally talked to himself aloud, And unaware that Whitey
+Bill McGarn was in a stope just above him, Sam diagnosed his loss: &ldquo;I
+opened right. I anted right. I bet right. I called right. Can&rsquo;t be but one
+answer. I was sitting in the wrong seat.&rdquo; (Sam Flake died suddenly at
+Tecopa Hot Springs in 1949.)</p>
+<p>The village of Tecopa is 11 miles south of Shoshone. When the
+railroad was built stations were given names of local significance and
+this honors the Indian chief, Cap Tecopa.</p>
+<p>Important discoveries of gold, silver, lead, and talc were made and
+are still being worked. In the early days murders of both whites and
+Indians, without any clues were of frequent occurrence. Someone recalled
+that every killing of an Indian by a white man had been followed
+by a white man&rsquo;s murder.</p>
+<p>The Piute believed in blood atonement and when a young American
+was found butchered in the Ibex hills, friends of the deceased went to
+Cap Tecopa with evidence which indicated the murder was committed
+by Cap&rsquo;s tribesmen. &ldquo;We want these killings stopped,&rdquo; they told him
+heatedly.</p>
+<p>Cap denied any knowledge of the crime and brushed aside the
+suggestion that he produce the assassin. &ldquo;Too many Indians,&rdquo; Cap said.
+&ldquo;But if you help, I can stop the killings.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo; they demanded.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_79">79</div>
+<p>&ldquo;You tell hiko no kill Indian. I tell Indian no kill hiko.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Cap Tecopa was a good prospector and owned a coveted claim
+which he refused to sell.</p>
+<p>Among the fortune seekers was a flashily dressed individual who
+wore a tall silk topper. The beegum fascinated Cap and he wanted it.
+He followed the wearer about, his eyes never leaving the shiny headgear.
+At last the urge to possess was irresistible and he approached the
+owner. A lean finger gingerly touched the sacred brim. &ldquo;How much?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>All he got was a shake of the head. Failure only stimulated Tecopa&rsquo;s
+desire. His money refused, Cap in his desperation thought of the claim
+which the cunning of the promoters, the wiles of gamblers, the pleas of
+friends had failed to get.</p>
+<p>The owner of the hat annoyed by Tecopa, decided to get rid of him.
+&ldquo;You take hat. I take claim.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Indian reached for the topper. &ldquo;Take um,&rdquo; he grunted and the
+deal was made. Several other versions of this story are recalled by
+old timers.</p>
+<p>The Tecopa Hot Springs were highly esteemed by the desert Indian,
+who always advertised the waters he believed to have medicinal
+value. In the Coso Range he used the walls of a canyon approaching
+the springs for his message. The crude drawing of a man was pictured,
+shoulders bent, leaning heavily on a stick. Another showed the same
+man leaving the springs but now walking erect, his stick abandoned.</p>
+<p>The Tecopa Springs are about one and a half miles north of Tecopa
+and furnish an astounding example of rumor&rsquo;s far-reaching power.
+Originally there was only one spring and when I first saw it, it was a
+round pool about eight feet in diameter, three feet deep and so hidden
+by tules that one might pass within a few feet of it unaware of its
+existence. The singularly clear water seeped from a barren hill. About,
+is a blinding white crust of boron and alkali. There Ann Cowboy used
+to lead Mary Shoofly, to stay the blindness that threatened Mary Shoofly&rsquo;s
+failing eyes. When the whites discovered the spring, the Indians
+abandoned it.</p>
+<p>Later it became a community bath tub and laundry. Prospectors
+would &ldquo;hoof&rdquo; it for miles to do their washing because the water was hot&mdash;112
+degrees, and the borax content assured easy cleansing. Husbands
+and wives began to go for baths and someone hauled in a few pieces of
+corrugated iron and made blinds behind which they bathed in the nude.
+A garment was hung on the blind as a sign of occupation and it is a
+tribute to the chivalry of desert men that they always stopped a few
+hundred feet away to look for that garment, and advanced only when it
+was removed.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_80">80</div>
+<p>Today you will see two new structures at the spring and long lines
+of bathers living in trailers parked nearby. They are victims of arthritis,
+rheumatism, swollen feet, or something that had baffled physicians,
+patent medicines, and quacks. They come from every part of the country.
+Somebody has told them that somebody else had been cured at a little
+spring on the desert between Shoshone and Tecopa.</p>
+<p>Some live under blankets, cook in a tin can over bits of wood
+hoarded like gold, for the vicinity is bare of growth. It is government
+land and space is free. Some camp on the bare ground without tent, the
+soft silt their only bed. &ldquo;Something ails my blood. Shoulder gets to
+aching. Neck stiff. Come here and boil out&rdquo; ... &ldquo;Like magic&mdash;this
+water. I&rsquo;ve been to every medicinal bath in Europe and America. This
+beats &rsquo;em all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>You finally turn away, dazed with stories of elephantine legs, restored
+to perfect size and symmetry. Of muscles dead for a decade,
+moving with the precision of a motor. Of joints rigid as a steel rail suddenly
+pliable as the ankles of a tap dancer.</p>
+<p>Here they sit in the sun&mdash;patient, hopeful; their crutches leaning
+against their trailer steps. They have the blessed privilege of discussing
+their ailments with each other. &ldquo;Oh, your misery was nothing. Doctors
+said I would never reach here alive....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>An analysis shows traces of radium.</p>
+<p>A few miles below Tecopa is another landmark of the country known
+as the China Ranch. To old timers it was known as The Chinaman&rsquo;s
+Ranch. One Quon Sing, who had been a cook at Old Harmony Borax
+Works quit that job to serve a Mr. Osborn, wealthy mining man with
+interests near Tecopa. His service with Osborn covered a period of many
+years.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t state it as a fact,&rdquo; Shorty Harris once told me, &ldquo;but I have
+been told by old settlers that Osborn located him on the ranch as a
+reward for long and faithful service.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The land was in the raw stage, with nothing to appeal to a white
+man except water. It was reached through a twisting canyon which
+filled at times with the raging torrents dropped by cloudbursts. Erosion
+has left spectacular scenery. In places mud walls lift straight up hundreds
+of feet. Nobody but a Chinaman or a bandit hiding from the law
+would have wanted it.</p>
+<p>There was a spring which the Chinaman developed and soon a little
+stream flowed all year. The industrious Chinaman converted it into
+a profitable ranch. He planted figs and dates and knowing, as only a
+Chinaman does, the value and uses of water the place was soon transformed
+into a garden with shade trees spreading over a green meadow&mdash;a
+<span class="pb" id="Page_81">81</span>
+cooling, restful little haven hidden away in the heart of the hills.
+He had cows and raised chickens and hogs. He planted grapes, dates,
+and vegetables and soon was selling his produce to the settlers scattered
+about the desert. From a wayfaring guest he would accept no money
+for food or lodging.</p>
+<p>After the Chinaman had brought the ranch to a high state of production
+a white man came along and since there was no law in the
+country, he made one of his own&mdash;his model the ancient one that &ldquo;He
+shall take who has the might and he shall keep who can.&rdquo; He chased
+the Chinaman off with a shot gun and sat down to enjoy himself, secure
+in the knowledge that nobody cared enough for a Chinaman to do
+anything about it.</p>
+<p>The Chinaman was never again heard of.</p>
+<p>The ranch since has had many owners. Though the roads are rough
+and the grades difficult, on the broad verandas that encircle the old
+ranch house, one feels he has found a bit of paradise &ldquo;away from it all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sitting on the porch once with Big Bill Greer, who owned a life
+interest in it until his demise recently, we talked of the various yarns
+told of the Chinaman.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The best thing he did was that planting over there by the stream.&rdquo;
+He lifted his huge form from the chair. &ldquo;Just wait a minute. I&rsquo;ll get you
+a specimen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>While he was gone I strolled around to see other miracles wrought
+by the heathen chased from his home by a Christian&rsquo;s gun. When I
+returned Bill was waiting with two tall glasses, diffusing a tantalizing
+aroma of bourbon. Floating on the liquor were bunches of crisp, cooling
+mint. He gave me one, lifted the other. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s to Quon Sing. God rest
+his soul,&rdquo; Bill said.</p>
+<p>As we slowly sipped I asked him if he had brought the specimen.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the mint,&rdquo; Bill said.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_82">82</div>
+<h2 id="c14"><span class="small">Chapter XII</span>
+<br />A Hovel That Ought To Be a Shrine</h2>
+<p>An Indian rode up to the bench, leaped from his cayuse and tried
+to tell Joe Ryan something about a &ldquo;hiko.&rdquo; Joe matched his pantomime
+and broken English, finally jerking a thumb over his shoulder and the
+Indian went into the store.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s Indian Johnnie,&rdquo; Joe said: &ldquo;Hundred and fifty miles to his
+place, other side of the Panamint. Awful country to get at. Shorty
+Harris is in a bad way at Ballarat.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A few moments later Charlie drove his pickup to the pump, filled
+the gas tank and before we realized it, was swallowed in a cloud of
+dust. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s in for a helluva trip,&rdquo; Joe said.</p>
+<p>Before the day was over, snow covered the high peaks and a
+biting wind drove us from the bench. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go over to the Mesquite
+Club,&rdquo; Joe said.</p>
+<p>We hurried across the road to the sprawling old building hidden in
+a thicket and listing in every direction of the compass, but over the roof,
+like friendly arms crooked the branches of big mesquite trees. Among
+mining men that ramshackle was known around the world.</p>
+<p>Inside was a big pot-bellied stove. Beside it, a huge woodbox. Chairs
+held together with baling wire. Two or three old auto seats hauled in
+from cars abandoned on the desert. An ancient, moth-eaten sofa on
+which the wayfarer out of luck was privileged to sleep. Three or four
+tables, each with a dog-eared deck of cards where old timers played
+solitaire or a spot of poker. There were books and magazines&mdash;high and
+low-brow, left by the tourists. But there was a friendliness about the
+shabby room that had nothing to gain from mahogany or chandeliers of
+gold.</p>
+<p>Wind kept us indoors for two days. On the third we were on the
+bench again when someone said, &ldquo;Here comes Charlie....&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_83">83</div>
+<p>A moment later Joe and Big Dan were helping Charlie take Shorty
+Harris, dean of Death Valley prospectors, more dead than alive, into a
+cabin and lay him on the bed. &ldquo;You must have had an awful time,&rdquo; Joe
+said to Charlie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not too bad ... made it,&rdquo; Charlie answered as he started a fire
+in the stove. He brought in water and wood and turned to Joe. &ldquo;Wish
+you&rsquo;d fill up that gas tank and see about the oil....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Joe looked at him, puzzled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Got to take him to the hospital,&rdquo; Charlie said.</p>
+<p>We knew that meant another trip of 140 miles.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Damned if you do,&rdquo; Joe said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll get somebody to go.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I supposed after the all night trip under such conditions Brown
+would go to bed but an hour later when I went to the store for some
+small purchase a woman climbed out of a pickup truck and with three
+small children, came in. She lived on her ranch 60 miles away and had
+come to buy her month&rsquo;s supply of provisions&mdash;a full load for the truck.
+When she paid her bill she nodded toward her brood: &ldquo;Charlie, those
+kids look like brush Indians with all that hair....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Charlie got scissors and comb and went to work. Before he had swept
+out the shorn locks Ben Brandt came in, holding his jaw.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Feels like a stamp mill,&rdquo; he groaned. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t slept in a week. Be
+dead by the time I get to Barstow.&rdquo; It was 125 miles to Barstow and
+Ben was waiting for a ride with someone going that way.</p>
+<p>Charlie went behind the counter, returned with forceps, opening
+and closing the jaws of the instrument two or three times as if in
+practice and then he turned to the sufferer: &ldquo;You understand it&rsquo;s
+against the law for me to use these things. In a pinch&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To hell with the law,&rdquo; Ben snapped. &ldquo;Yank it out!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Charlie took a chair to the back porch. Ben sat down and with a
+vice-like arm about Ben&rsquo;s head, the forceps went in and the tooth came
+out.</p>
+<p>I went outside and sat on the bench with a better understanding of
+Shoshone and people and values which come only from friendships
+closely knitted and help unselfishly given.</p>
+<p>Why does a man like the desert? As good an answer as any is
+another question: Why does he like chicken? Students of human
+behavior, poets, writers, gushing debutantes and greying dowagers,
+humorless scientists, and bored urbanites have labored mightily to explain
+it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Something just gets into the blood,&rdquo; one says, frankly groping for
+an answer. Immensities of space. Solitudes that whittle the ego down
+to size. Detachment from routine cares. A feel of nearness to whatever
+<span class="pb" id="Page_84">84</span>
+it is that is God. Stars to finger. The muted symphonies of farflung sky
+and earth.</p>
+<p>Whatever it is, I was now aware that as between hell and Shoshone,
+I would give the nod to Shoshone. I was getting used to Shoshone and
+desolation when a few days later Charlie came out of the store and sat
+beside me on the bench. &ldquo;Road&rsquo;s open,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I reckon you&rsquo;re in a
+hurry to get away.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I didn&rsquo;t answer at once but conscious of his searching look, finally
+stammered that Dan Modine wanted me to go with him to Happy Jack&rsquo;s
+party. &ldquo;I can spare another day....&rdquo; Charlie lit a cigarette, took a
+puff or two. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve gone desert,&rdquo; he chuckled and went back into the
+store.</p>
+<p>For a week I&rsquo;d been hearing of Happy Jack&rsquo;s party and when Dan
+told me that everyone within 100 miles would be on hand, I was glad
+to go. Dan gave me Jack&rsquo;s background on the 35 mile trip across dry
+washes, deep sands, and hairpin turns on pitching hills.</p>
+<p>Born on the desert, Jack was the son of a Forty Niner and a Piute
+squaw. He had grown up as an Indian and had married Mary, a full
+blood Piute. Jack&rsquo;s brother Lem married Anna, another squaw.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lem had worked at odd jobs and in the mines,&rdquo; Dan said. &ldquo;Now
+and then he and Anna would do a little prospecting. Anna found a claim
+that showed a little color. Lem worked alongside his squaw a couple
+weeks, but it was a back breaking job and Lem quit it. But Anna kept
+digging and one day she came up to their shack with a piece of ore that
+was almost pure gold. Anna&rsquo;s find made them rich.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I reckon money does things to people. Anyway, it didn&rsquo;t take Lem
+long to get rid of Anna. He gave her enough so that she could take it
+easy. Then he pushed off to the city to live high, wide, and handsome. I
+see Anna now and then. She&rsquo;s not jolly like she used to be. Lem has
+always wanted Jack to get rid of Mary and come to the city. In fact,
+Jack told me once that Lem offered to give him half of his money if he
+would do that. But Jack said, to hell with the city. He&rsquo;s the happy go
+lucky sort. Big, good looking, and lazy. His old dobe under the cottonwood
+tree and the water running by with plenty of outdoors&mdash;that
+suits Jack.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We found, as Dan had predicted, that everybody in the country had
+come to Jack&rsquo;s party. A long U shaped table was placed outside under
+the shade of a tree. From nearby pits came a tantalizing aroma of
+barbecue. A keg of bourbon encircled with glasses stood beside a bucket
+of dripping mint. Cigars and cigarettes were on top of the keg and Jack
+saw that his guests were always supplied.</p>
+<p>There was an orchestra with capable musicians, Jack occasionally
+<span class="pb" id="Page_85">85</span>
+pinch hitting for the bull fiddler when the latter took time out for a
+drink or a dance. But when the snare drum player wanted his bourbon,
+Jack was like a kid pulling doodads from a Christmas tree. &ldquo;It will
+last a week,&rdquo; Dan said. &ldquo;A few may pull out after a day or two, but
+others will take their places.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This must have cost Jack a year&rsquo;s labor,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I told him that
+once,&rdquo; Dan laughed. &ldquo;He asked me what else would a fellow work a
+year for.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jack&rsquo;s views of life and things were Mary&rsquo;s, except that Mary knew
+lean years come and if any provisions were to be made for them she
+would have to make them. She tended the goats and the sheep, cut the
+deer and the mountain sheep into strips and hung them high, where the
+flies wouldn&rsquo;t get them, to cure in the breeze. If Jack wanted to throw
+a party, so did Mary. &ldquo;... Big party ... kill fat steer. Five sheep.
+Heap good time....&rdquo; To Jack&rsquo;s everlasting credit, be it said that whatever
+Mary did, suited Jack.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, him fine man,&rdquo; Mary would say. &ldquo;Like home. Play with children.
+No get mad....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There may be somewhere in this world a morsel approaching Mary&rsquo;s
+barbecued mountain sheep, but I&rsquo;ve never tasted it.</p>
+<p>Jack told me later that the best meat is that from an old ram with
+no teeth. &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t eaten all winter, because his teeth won&rsquo;t let him
+cut the hard, woody sage and being starved when spring comes, he
+gorges on the new sacatone. He fattens quickly and his flesh is tender.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>While Dan and I were walking about, a long limousine came across
+the valley and parked behind a screen of mesquite well away from the
+house and the guests. Dan and I happened to be nearby as a big, dark
+man expensively tailored stepped out. A lady fashionably dressed remained
+in the car.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s Lem,&rdquo; Dan explained. &ldquo;When he was a kid he ran around in
+a gee string. I reckon his wife doesn&rsquo;t want to meet the in-laws.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We came upon him a moment later and while he and Dan talked of
+old times Jack rushed down and embraced Lem. &ldquo;Come up,&rdquo; he urged,
+but Lem&rsquo;s interest was lukewarm. Mary was busy and he would see her
+later. No, he didn&rsquo;t wish a drink. He had cigars. Just stopped in to see
+how Jack was and if he&rsquo;d changed his mind.</p>
+<p>Dan and I moved away and sat under a shed along the runoff of
+the spring and had no choice about listening to a conversation not
+intended for our ears.</p>
+<p>Jack was squatted on his heels and his brother was sitting on a
+boulder. Lem was talking, his voice brittle: &ldquo;Of course, we married
+squaws ... but we are more white than Indian. I&rsquo;ll give you all the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_86">86</span>
+money you need. Let Mary go back to her people. She&rsquo;ll be happy.
+Look at Anna ... she&rsquo;s contented and better off with her own people
+and it will be the same with Mary.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Lem lifted his hand, a big diamond ring flashing on his finger as he
+pointed to the squalid cabin where Jack&rsquo;s fat squaw, her face beaming,
+was serving the guests. &ldquo;Look at that hovel. Just a pig sty. If you prefer
+that to $10,000 a year, it&rsquo;s your business. I&rsquo;ve come out for the
+last time....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jack, bareheaded, rose, his hair rumpled in the wind as he glanced
+at the things about&mdash;the sagging roof, the shade tree beside it and
+following his glance I saw Mary smile at him and wave. Then he
+turned to Lem: &ldquo;A pig sty, huh? Ten thousand a year. Mansion in
+the city.&rdquo; His eyes traveled over Lem&rsquo;s smart tailored suit, the diamond,
+the malacca cane pecking the gravel at his feet. I could see Jack&rsquo;s
+fingers digging at his palms, the muscles rippling along his wrists and I
+sensed that he was seething inside.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pig sty.... One year I recollect, no crop. No meat. No game.
+Nothing. I was down with fever. She was down too, but she got up
+and walked and crawled from here to Indian Springs. Through the
+brush. Over the mountain to get grub from her people. Why, sometimes
+I&rsquo;d feel like going off by myself and bawling....&rdquo; Jack turned
+again to his brother, flint in his dark eyes. &ldquo;I ought to brain you. To
+hell with your money. She stuck with me and bigod, I&rsquo;ll stick with her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then Jack calmly strode back to his party, and somehow it seemed
+to me the hovel had suddenly become a holy shrine.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_87">87</div>
+<h2 id="c15"><span class="small">Chapter XIII</span>
+<br />Sex in Death Valley Country</h2>
+<p>Sex, of course, went with the white man to the desert, but because
+there were no Freuds, no Kinseys stirring the social sewage, it was considered
+merely as a biologic urge and thus its impact on the lives of the
+early settlers was a realistic one. It was not good for man to live
+alone. The husky young adventurer found a water hole and a cottonwood
+tree and built a cabin. But he found it wasn&rsquo;t a home. The lonely
+immensity of space he knew, was no place for a white woman and none
+were there. He faced the fundamental problem squarely and looked
+about for a squaw.</p>
+<p>He paid Hungry Bill or some other Indian head man $10 for the
+mate of his choice and that sanctified the relation. She brought a certain
+degree of orderliness to the cabin, washed his clothes, cooked his meals.
+A child was born and the cabin became a home. The squaw could
+sharpen a stick, walk out into the brush and return with herbs and
+roots and serve a palatable dinner. She worked his fields, groomed
+his horses and relieved him of responsibility for the children. The
+progeny followed the rules of breeding. Some good. Some bad.</p>
+<p>Said old Jim Baker, who married a Shoshone, pleading for a &ldquo;squar&rdquo;
+deal for his son: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one creature worse than a genuine Indian
+and that&rsquo;s a half breed. He has got two devils in him and is meaner than
+the meanest Indian I ever saw. That boy of mine is a half-breed and he
+ain&rsquo;t accountable.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Almost all of the first settlers were squaw men and the matings were
+tolerated because they were understood. It was often a long journey to
+obtain the sanction of a Chief and the squaw was taken without formality.
+Many of these matings lasted and the offspring were absorbed
+without social embarrassment in the life of the community. Dr. Kinsey
+would have had little joy in his search for perversion or infidelities,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_88">88</span>
+though there is the instance of a drunken squaw who aroused the owner
+of a saloon at midnight on the Ash Meadows desert and shouted: &ldquo;I want
+a man....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Once Shoshone faced the desperate need of a school. There were
+only three children of school age in the little settlement and the nearest
+school was 28 miles away. Parents complained, but authorities at the
+county seat nearly 200 miles away, pointed out that the law required 13
+children or an average attendance of five and a half to form a school
+district.</p>
+<p>Like other community problems it was taken to Charlie, though
+none believed that even Charlie could solve it.</p>
+<p>The time for the opening of schools was but a few weeks away
+when one day Brown headed his car out into the desert. &ldquo;Hunting trip,&rdquo;
+he explained.</p>
+<p>In a hovel he found Rosie, a Piute squaw with a brood of children.
+&ldquo;How old?&rdquo; Charlie asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Him five ... him six now,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Him seven. Him eight.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How&rsquo;d you like to live at Shoshone? Plenty work. Good house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Okay. Me come,&rdquo; Rosie said.</p>
+<p>With the half breeds, the school was able to open.</p>
+<p>Rosie was a challenging problem. She would have taken no beauty
+prize among the Piutes, but when along her desert trails she acquired
+these children of assorted parentage, Fate dealt her an ace.</p>
+<p>With the few dollars Rosie wangled from the several fathers for
+the support of their children, she lived unworried. She liked to get
+drunk and the only nettling problem in her life was the federal law
+against selling liquor to Indians. So she established her own medium
+of exchange&mdash;a bottle of liquor. Unfortunately she spread a social
+disease and that was something to worry about.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Rosie has Shoshone over a barrel,&rdquo; Joe Ryan said. &ldquo;If we run her
+out, we won&rsquo;t have enough children for school.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then there was the economic angle&mdash;the loss of wages by afflicted
+miners and mines crippled by the absence of the unafflicted who would
+take time off to go to Las Vegas for the commodity supplied by Rosie.</p>
+<p>Charlie arranged for Ann Cowboy to look after Rosie&rsquo;s children
+and called up W. H. Brown, deputy sheriff at Death Valley Junction
+and told him to come for Rosie. Brownie, as he is known all over the
+desert, came and took Rosie into custody. &ldquo;What&rsquo;ll I charge her with?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She has a venereal disease,&rdquo; Charlie said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no law I know of against that....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right. Charge her with pollution. She got drunk and fell into
+<span class="pb" id="Page_89">89</span>
+the spring.&rdquo; Then Charlie called up the Judge and suggested Rosie have
+a year&rsquo;s vacation in the county jail.</p>
+<p>The paths that radiated from Rosie&rsquo;s shack in the brush like spokes
+from the hub of a wheel, were soon overgrown with salt grass. She
+served her sentence and returned to Shoshone and the paths were soon
+beaten smooth again.</p>
+<p>Eventually Brown declared Shoshone out of bounds for Rosie and
+she moved over into Nevada. There she found a lover of her tribe and
+one night when both were drunk, Rosie decided she&rsquo;d had enough of
+him and with a big, sharp knife she calmly disemboweled him&mdash;for
+which unladylike incident she was removed to a Nevada prison where
+the state cured her syphilis and turned her loose&mdash;if not morally reformed,
+at least physically fit.</p>
+<p>One of Rosie&rsquo;s patrons was a man thought to be in his middle fifties.
+Always carefully groomed, his white shirts, spotless ties, and tailored
+suits were conspicuous in a place where levis were the rule. He was also
+a total abstainer. When he died suddenly and it was learned he was 82
+years old, Shoshone gasped. An item in his will read: &ldquo;To Rosie, $50 to
+buy whiskey.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Living in a wickiup in the mesquite was the Indian, Tom Weed,
+who shared with his squaw a passion for liquor. Sober, Tom was industrious
+in the Indian way. He knew the country, when and where the
+mountain sheep were fattest; the herbs that cured and the best grasses for
+the beautiful baskets woven by his wife.</p>
+<p>Tom filed on a deposit of non-metallic ore near Shoshone and forgot
+it. A subsequent locater found a buyer. Considerable capital was to be
+invested and the purchaser decided that Tom, if so disposed, could at
+least challenge the title. In order to dispose of Tom he sent the document
+to Dad Fairbanks together with a check payable to Tom for $1000 and
+asked Dad to get a quit claim deed from Tom.</p>
+<p>Since $1000 was more than Tom ever expected to see in his life
+he was eager to sign. &ldquo;You cash check?&rdquo; he asked Dad.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; Dad told him.</p>
+<p>As Dad was getting the money he said, &ldquo;Tom, long winter ahead.
+Hard to get work. Don&rsquo;t you think you&rsquo;d better leave money with me?
+Might come in handy.&rdquo; Dad saw that Tom was impressed and added:
+&ldquo;You told me yesterday you were going over to Las Vegas. That&rsquo;s another
+good reason. Think it over.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Okay. Me think.&rdquo; Tom stood for a long moment staring at the
+floor, studying every angle of the problem. Finally he thrust his palm
+at Dad and said gravely: &ldquo;Might die....&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_90">90</div>
+<p>Dad gave him the money and Tom went to Las Vegas. In an hour
+he was drunk. In three he was broke and in jail.</p>
+<p>One night he and his squaw got blissfully drunk. They were sleeping
+in a shed full of combustible junk when it caught fire. Other Indians
+attracted by their screams rushed to the scene but both were dead. From
+Tom&rsquo;s wickiup, a few feet from the shed, they took Tom&rsquo;s guns and saddles,
+his squaw&rsquo;s priceless baskets&mdash;all the belongings of both&mdash;and
+tossed them into the flames. Thus the evil spirits were kept away and
+the souls of Tom and his squaw passed happily to the Piute heaven
+which is a place where there is a big lake and forests filled with game
+and the squaws are strong and plentiful.</p>
+<p class="tb">The Johnnie Mine, an important gold producer, east of Shoshone,
+was located by John Tecopa, son of Cap Tecopa, Pahrump Chief.</p>
+<p>Tecopa found the float; gave Ed Metcalf an interest to help him
+locate the ledge. Bob and Monte Montgomery bought the claim. They
+interested Jerry Langford, who induced the Mormon Church to get
+behind the project.</p>
+<p>The Potosi was an early discovery on Timber Mountain between the
+Johnnie Mine and Good Springs. (It was here that Carole Lombard,
+wife of Clark Gable, was killed in an airplane accident in 1941.) From
+this mine came the lead which made the bullets used in the Mountain
+Meadows massacre. Jeff Grundy, a prospector of early days, said his
+father molded the bullets and delivered them to John D. Lee, who after
+20 years was executed for the murder of the 123 victims of the massacre.</p>
+<p>Lee was the owner of Lee&rsquo;s Ferry, which was the only place where
+the Colorado River could be crossed in the Grand Canyon area until the
+present suspension bridge 500 feet high was built.</p>
+<p>Near Johnnie are Ash Meadows and the beautiful Pahrump Valley,
+overlooked by the Charleston Mountains&mdash;the summer sleeping porch
+of Las Vegas, 35 miles south.</p>
+<p>At Ash Meadows lived Jack Longstreet, who wore his hair long
+enough to cover his ears. He claimed kinship with the distinguished
+South Carolina family of that name. Easier to prove is that Mr. Longstreet
+came from Texas and as a 14 year old youngster was caught with
+a band of horse thieves in Colorado. The older ones were hanged but
+because of his youth Longstreet was released after his ears were cropped
+to brand him for identification by others. He lived and drank lustily for
+96 years and died with a competency.</p>
+<p>Near Johnnie also lived Mary Scott, who discovered the Confidence
+Mine, a landmark in Death Valley. Mary was a squaw who, after
+consorting with several white men, chose for her mate a half-breed
+<span class="pb" id="Page_91">91</span>
+named Bob Scott. On a hunting and trapping trip Mary picked up some
+ore which Scott decided was silver. Since silver could not be profitably
+handled because of transportation costs, Scott filed no notice.</p>
+<p>Years after Scott&rsquo;s death, Mary showed samples of the ore to her
+cousin, an Indian named Bob Black and Bob showed it to Frank Cole,
+a millwright at the Johnnie Mine. Cole and Jimmy Ashdown grubstaked
+Mary and Bob, who returned to Death Valley and located the
+property. Samples showed rich gold.</p>
+<p>For a wagon with a canopy and a spavined horse Cole and Ashdown
+secured the interest of Mary and Bob. Cole and Ashdown then
+sold to the Montgomery brothers, who through Bishop Cannon secured
+backing for the venture from the Mormon Church.</p>
+<p>Dan Driscoll built the road to the mine. Shorty Harris, Bob Warnack,
+and Rube Graham dug the well and mine shaft. It produced rich
+ore to a depth of 65 feet, where the vein was broken up.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_92">92</div>
+<h2 id="c16"><span class="small">Chapter XIV</span>
+<br />Shoshone Country. Resting Springs</h2>
+<p>The country about Shoshone is identified with the earliest migration
+of Americans to California.</p>
+<p>It is a curious fact that prior to the coming of Jedediah Smith who,
+in 1826 was actually the first American to enter the state from the east,
+the contented Spanish believed that the Sierras were insurmountable
+barriers to invasion by the hated American or any attacking enemy.</p>
+<p>After Smith the first white American to look upon the Shoshone
+region so far as known, was William Wolfskill, a Kentucky trapper who
+left Santa Fe in 1830-31 on a trading expedition with stores of cloth,
+garments, and gimcracks.</p>
+<p>Having had poor luck in disposing of his cargo, when he reached
+the Virgin River he decided to push westward across the Mojave Desert
+and entered California by way of Cajon Pass. After resting at San Gabriel
+he went north into the San Joaquin Valley. There he disposed of his stock
+at fabulous prices, taking in trade mules, horses, silks, and other items
+which he took to Taos and Santa Fe, receiving for this merchandise
+equally huge profits.</p>
+<p>Wolfskill later settled in Los Angeles, one of the earliest Americans
+in the pueblo where he acquired large land holdings. There he established
+the citrus industry, planting a grove in what is now the heart of Los
+Angeles.</p>
+<p>In 1832 Joseph B. Chiles organized a party at Independence, Missouri,
+and started for California. It numbered 50 men, women, and children.
+Upon reaching Fort Laramie, Wyoming (which was officially Fort
+John, but for some reason was never so called) Chiles met Joseph Reddeford
+Walker and employed him as guide.</p>
+<p>Eighteen years before the Bennett-Arcane party came to grief,
+Walker had discovered Walker River and Walker Lake in Nevada,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_93">93</span>
+afterward named for him. After reaching the Sierras, his jaded teams
+were unable to cross and had to be abandoned, the party narrowly
+escaping death. Having heard of the southerly course over the old
+Spanish Trail, he turned back and over it guided the Chiles party.</p>
+<p>Early in 1843, John C. Fremont led a party of 39 men from Salt
+Lake City northward to Fort Vancouver and in November of that year,
+started on the return trip to the East. This trip was interrupted when he
+found his party threatened by cold and starvation and he faced about;
+crossed the Sierra Nevadas and went to Sutter&rsquo;s Fort. After resting and
+outfitting, he set out for the East by the southerly route over the old
+Spanish trail, which leads through the Shoshone region.</p>
+<p>At a spring somewhere north of the Mojave River he made camp.
+The water nauseated some of his men and he moved to another. Identification
+of these springs has been a matter of dispute and though historians
+have honestly tried to identify them, the fact remains that none can say
+&ldquo;I was there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the vicinity were several springs any of which may have been the
+one referred to by Fremont in his account of the journey. Among these
+were two water holes indicated on early maps as Agua de Tio Mesa, and
+another as Agua de Tomaso.</p>
+<p>There are several springs of nauseating water in the area and some
+of the old timers academically inclined, insisted that Fremont probably
+camped at Saratoga Springs, which afforded a sight of Telescope Peak or
+at Salt Spring, nine miles east on the present Baker-Shoshone Highway
+at Rocky Point.</p>
+<p>Kit Carson was Fremont&rsquo;s guide. Fremont records that two Mexicans
+rode into his camp on April 27, 1844, and asked him to recover some
+horses which they declared had been stolen from them by Indians at the
+Archilette Spring, 13 miles east of Shoshone.</p>
+<p>One of the Mexicans was Andreas Fuentes, the other a boy of 11
+years&mdash;Pablo Hernandez. While the Indians were making the raid, the
+boy and Fuentes had managed to get away with 30 of the horses and
+these they had left for safety at a water hole known to them as Agua de
+Tomaso. They reported that they had left Pablo&rsquo;s father and mother and
+a man named Santiago Giacome and his wife at Archilette Spring.</p>
+<p>With Fremont, besides Kit Carson, was another famed scout, Alexander
+Godey, a St. Louis Frenchman&mdash;a gay, good looking dare devil
+who later married Maria Antonia Coronel, daughter of a rich Spanish
+don and became prominent in California.</p>
+<p>In answer to the Mexicans&rsquo; plea for help, Fremont turned to his
+men and asked if any of them wished to aid the victims of the Piute
+raid. He told them he would furnish horses for such a purpose if anyone
+<span class="pb" id="Page_94">94</span>
+cared to volunteer. Of the incident Kit Carson, who learned to
+write after he was grown, says in his dictated autobiography: &ldquo;Godey
+and myself volunteered with the expectation that some men of our
+party would join us. They did not. We two and the Mexicans ...
+commenced the pursuit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Fuentes&rsquo; horse gave out and he returned to Fremont&rsquo;s camp that
+night, but Godey, Carson, and the boy went on. They had good moonlight
+at first but upon entering a deep and narrow canyon, utter blackness
+came, even shutting out starlight, and Carson says they had to
+&ldquo;feel for the trail.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>One may with reason surmise that Godey and Carson proceeded
+through the gorge that leads to the China Ranch and now known as
+Rainbow Canyon. When they could go no farther they slept an hour,
+resumed the hunt and shortly after sunrise, saw the Indians feasting on
+the carcass of one of the stolen horses. They had slain five others and
+these were being boiled. Carson&rsquo;s and Godey&rsquo;s horses were too tired
+to go farther and were hitched out of sight among the rocks. The
+hunters took the trail afoot and made their way into the herd of stolen
+horses.</p>
+<p>Says Carson: &ldquo;A young one got frightened. That frightened the rest.
+The Indians noticed the commotion ... sprang to their arms. We
+now considered it time to charge on the Indians. They were about 30
+in number. We charged. I fired, killing one. Godey fired, missed but
+reloaded and fired, killing another. There were only three shots fired
+and two were killed. The remainder ran. I ... ascended a hill to keep
+guard while Godey scalped the dead Indians. He scalped the one he shot
+and was proceeding toward the one I shot. He was not yet dead and was
+behind some rocks. As Godey approached he raised, let fly an arrow. It
+passed through Godey&rsquo;s shirt collar. He again fell and Godey finished
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Subsequently it was discovered that Godey hadn&rsquo;t missed, but that
+both men had fired at the same Indian as proven by two bullets found
+in one of the dead Indians. Godey called these Indians &ldquo;Diggars.&rdquo; The
+one with the two bullets was the one who sent the arrow through
+Godey&rsquo;s collar and when Godey was scalping him, &ldquo;he sprang to his
+feet, the blood streaming from his skinned head and uttered a hideous
+yowl.&rdquo; Godey promptly put him out of his pain.</p>
+<p>They returned to camp. Writes Fremont: &ldquo;A war whoop was heard
+such as Indians make when returning from a victorious enterprise and
+soon Carson and Godey appeared, driving before them a band of horses
+recognized by Fuentes to be part of those they had lost. Two bloody
+scalps dangling from the end of Godey&rsquo;s gun....&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_95">95</div>
+<p>Fremont wrote of it later: &ldquo;The place, object and numbers considered,
+this expedition of Carson and Godey may be considered among
+the boldest and most disinterested which the annals of Western adventure
+so full of daring deeds can present.&rdquo; It was indeed a gallant
+response to the plea of unfortunates whom they&rsquo;d never seen before and
+would never see again.</p>
+<p>When Fremont and his party reached the camp of the Mexicans
+they found the horribly butchered bodies of Hernandez, Pablo&rsquo;s father,
+and Giacome. The naked bodies of the wives were found somewhat
+removed and shackled to stakes.</p>
+<p>Fremont changed the name of the spring from Archilette to Agua
+de Hernandez and as such it was known for several years. He took the
+Mexican boy, Pablo Hernandez, with him to Missouri where he was
+placed with the family of Fremont&rsquo;s father-in-law, U. S. Senator Thomas
+H. Benton. The young Mexican didn&rsquo;t care for civilization and the
+American way of life and in the spring of 1847 begged to be returned
+to Mexico. Senator Benton secured transportation for him on the
+schooner Flirt, by order of the Navy, and he was landed at Vera Cruz&mdash;a
+record of which is preserved in the archives of the 30th Congress,
+1848.</p>
+<p>Three years later a rumor was circulated that the famed bandit,
+Joaquin Murietta was no other than Pablo Hernandez.</p>
+<p>Lieutenant, afterwards Colonel, Brewerton was at Resting Springs
+in 1848 with Kit Carson who then was carrying important messages
+for the government to New Mexico. He found the ground white with the
+bleached bones of other victims of the desert Indians. Brewerton
+calls them Pau Eutaws.</p>
+<p>The Mormons began early to look upon this region as a logical part
+of the State of Deseret, for the creation of which, Brigham Young petitioned
+Congress, setting forth among reasons for the recognition of
+such a state that: &ldquo;... We are so far removed from all civilized society
+and organized government and also natural barriers of trackless
+deserts, including mountains of snow and savages more bloody than
+either, so that we can never be united with any other portion of the
+country.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As early as 1851, the far-seeing Young decided to found a colony
+of Saints in San Bernardino, California, to extend Mormon influence.
+Sam Brannan, brilliant adherent of that faith, had already come to
+California with the nucleus of a Mormon colony in 1846, two years
+before Marshall discovered gold.</p>
+<p>Brannan became an outstanding figure among the Argonauts. None
+exceeded him in leadership or popularity in the building of San Francisco
+<span class="pb" id="Page_96">96</span>
+and the state. He grew rich and unfortunately began drinking; finally
+abandoned Mormonism and died poor.</p>
+<p>The colonizers sent out by Brigham Young were in three divisions.
+One under the leadership of Amasa Lyman, who brought his five wives.
+Another was headed by Charles C. Rich, who was accompanied by three
+of his wives. It is interesting to note that Rich became the father of
+51 children by five wives.</p>
+<p>The third division was under the command of Captain Jefferson
+Hunt, guide for the entire party. These leaders were all able men who
+were highly regarded by gentiles. They also camped at Agua de Hernandez
+and it was the Mormons who junked the previous name and gave
+one with significance. They called it &ldquo;Resting Springs&rdquo; and this more
+fitting name has lasted.</p>
+<p>On May 21, 1851, the Mormon elder, Parley P. Pratt, heading a
+party of missionaries en route to the South Sea Islands writes in his
+diary: &ldquo;We encamped at a place called Resting Springs.... This is a
+fine place for rest.... Since leaving the Vegas (Las Vegas) we have
+traveled 75 miles through the most horrible desert.... Twenty miles
+from the Vegas we were assailed ... by a shower of arrows from the
+savage mountain robbers.... Leaving Resting Springs the party arrived
+at Salt Spring gold mines toward evening....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In 1850, Phineas Banning, pioneer resident of Los Angeles and
+later owner of Catalina Island, hauled freight from Los Angeles to the
+gold mine at Salt Spring opposite Rocky Point just south of the Amargosa
+River on the Baker road and in 1854 Mormons discovered gold 25
+miles south of Resting Springs, long before Dr. French searched for the
+Gunsight in Death Valley.</p>
+<p>The Amargosa River is one of the world&rsquo;s most remarkable water
+courses. Originating at Springdale, north of Beatty, Nevada, it twists
+southward in zigzag pattern until it reaches a point about 34 miles
+south of Shoshone. There it turns west, crosses Highway 127, enters
+Death Valley at its most southerly point and then turns north to disappear
+60 miles from the place of its origin.</p>
+<p>You may cross and re-cross it many times totally unaware of its
+existence, but in the cloudburst season it can and does become a terrible
+agent of destruction.</p>
+<p>In 1853 Major George Chorpenning obtained a contract to carry
+mail between the Mormon colony of San Bernardino, California, and
+Salt Lake. To reach Resting Springs, a station on the route, required
+five days. Today it is a journey of four hours.</p>
+<p>Resting Springs was also a relay station for white outlaws and
+Indian raiders from Utah, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Even before
+Fremont, Carson, or the Mormons old Bill Williams, for whom Bill
+Williams River, Bill Williams Mountain, and the town of Williams,
+Arizona, are named was at Resting Springs.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_i">i</div>
+<div class="img" id="map1">
+<img src="images/map1_lr.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="895" />
+<p class="pcap">Map of Death Valley<br /><a class="ab" href="images/map1_hr.jpg">High-resolution Map</a></p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_ii">ii</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig1">
+<img src="images/pmg002.jpg" alt="" width="447" height="600" />
+<p class="pcap">John W. Searles, looking for gold, made a fortune in borax.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig2">
+<img src="images/pmg002a.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="342" />
+<p class="pcap">
+<span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Like Weepah which &ldquo;Boomed and Busted&rdquo; after one day,
+Gilbert died after a few weeks.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_iii">iii</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig3">
+<img src="images/pmg002b.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="533" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD G. WEIGHT</span>
+Saratoga Springs</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig4">
+<img src="images/pmg002c.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="544" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+The Bottom of America</p>
+</div>
+<p class="center">BAD WATER
+<br />279.6 FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL
+<br />LOWEST POINT IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE</p>
+<table class="center" summary="">
+<tr><td class="l">&lArr; </td><td class="l">SHOSHONE </td><td class="r">57</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="l">&lArr; </td><td class="l">BAKER </td><td class="r">93</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="l"> </td><td class="l">FURNACE CREEK </td><td class="r">17 </td><td class="l">&rArr;</td></tr>
+</table>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_iv">iv</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig5">
+<img src="images/pmg003.jpg" alt="" width="415" height="600" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Grave of Jas. Dayton.
+<br />Bones are those of his horses.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig6">
+<img src="images/pmg003a.jpg" alt="" width="455" height="600" />
+<p class="pcap">Dugouts in Dublin Gulch at Shoshone.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig7">
+<img src="images/pmg003b.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="537" />
+<p class="pcap">Mesquite Club, Shoshone. Known throughout the West.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_v">v</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig8">
+<img src="images/pmg003c.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="858" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Golden Canyon</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_vi">vi</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig9">
+<img src="images/pmg004.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="526" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+One of the famous Twenty Mule Teams.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig10">
+<img src="images/pmg004c.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="540" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Here boomed and busted the C. C. Julian swindle. Great names and
+great banks were shamefully involved.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_vii">vii</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig11">
+<img src="images/pmg004d.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="545" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Yellow Aster Mine (foreground) made owners rich. Randsburg in the background.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig12">
+<img src="images/pmg004e.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="547" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Belle Springs (Agua Tomaso) on old Salt Lake trail.
+Camp site of John C. Fremont.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_viii">viii</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig13">
+<img src="images/pmg005.jpg" alt="" width="413" height="599" />
+<p class="pcap">Ralph Jacobus Fairbanks, outstanding
+pioneer, every man&rsquo;s friend.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig14">
+<img src="images/pmg005a.jpg" alt="" width="436" height="600" />
+<p class="pcap">Dobe Charlie Nels.
+<br />He saw Bodie boom and die.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig15">
+<img src="images/pmg005b.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="483" />
+<p class="pcap">Bodie, hellroarer from cemetery. Now another ghost town.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_ix">ix</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig16">
+<img src="images/pmg005d.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="865" />
+<p class="pcap">Seldom-seen Slim, colorful desert character.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_x">x</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig17">
+<img src="images/pmg006.jpg" alt="" width="412" height="596" />
+<p class="pcap">Senator Charles Brown,
+benevolent overlord of Death Valley.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig18">
+<img src="images/pmg006a.jpg" alt="" width="437" height="596" />
+<p class="pcap">Panamint Tom, noted Piute,
+brother of Hungry Bill, Indian Chief</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig19">
+<img src="images/pmg006b.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="541" />
+<p class="pcap">Where these wickiups were, now stands luxurious Furnace Creek Inn.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xi">xi</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig20">
+<img src="images/pmg006c.jpg" alt="" width="556" height="800" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">Courtesy Frasher&rsquo;s Photo.  Pomona, Calif.</span>
+Darwin Falls</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xii">xii</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig21">
+<img src="images/pmg007.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="510" />
+<p class="pcap">First House in Shoshone, built by Cub Lee.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig22">
+<img src="images/pmg007a.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="541" />
+<p class="pcap">Shorty Harris and his cabin at Ballarat, Panamint Valley.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xiii">xiii</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig23">
+<img src="images/pmg007c.jpg" alt="" width="458" height="500" />
+<p class="pcap">Jim Butler, the discoverer
+of Tonopah Silver.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig24">
+<img src="images/pmg007d.jpg" alt="" width="449" height="500" />
+<p class="pcap">Sir Harry Oakes, booted off a
+train one day, discovered one
+of the world&rsquo;s richest mines the
+next.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig25">
+<img src="images/pmg007e.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="647" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Beatty, Nevada. Bare Mountain in distance.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xiv">xiv</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig26">
+<img src="images/pmg008.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="598" />
+<p class="pcap">&ldquo;Ma&rdquo; and &ldquo;Dad&rdquo; Fairbanks.
+<br />He was known to the Indians as Long Man.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig27">
+<img src="images/pmg008a.jpg" alt="" width="319" height="601" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Old Road Sign in Emigrant Wash.</p>
+</div>
+<p class="center">Townsend Pass &rarr;
+<br />&larr; Skidoo 7 M.</p>
+<div class="img" id="fig28">
+<img src="images/pmg008b.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="481" />
+<p class="pcap">Rock resting on gravel, gravel on sand. Here Quon Sing, heathen,
+created an oasis, was chased off by Christian&rsquo;s guns.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xv">xv</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig29">
+<img src="images/pmg008c.jpg" alt="" width="356" height="594" />
+<p class="pcap">Death Valley Scotty on his native heath.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig30">
+<img src="images/pmg008d.jpg" alt="" width="358" height="594" />
+<p class="pcap">Charles and Stella Brown, Shoshone.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig31">
+<img src="images/pmg008e.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="456" />
+<p class="pcap">Station at Rhyolite, Nevada, long a ghost town.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xvi">xvi</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig32">
+<img src="images/pmg009.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="649" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Monument in Death Valley honors Shorty Harris.</p>
+</div>
+<blockquote>
+<p>BURY ME BESIDE JIM DAYTON IN THE
+VALLEY WE LOVED. ABOVE ME WRITE:
+&ldquo;HERE LIES SHORTY HARRIS, A SINGLE
+BLANKET JACKASS PROSPECTOR.&rdquo;&mdash;EPITAPH
+REQUESTED BY SHORTY (FRANK) HARRIS
+BELOVED GOLD HUNTER. 1856-1834.
+HERE JAS. DAYTON, PIONEER, PERISHED 1898.</p>
+<p><span class="small">TO THESE TRAILMAKERS WHOSE COURAGE MATCHES
+THE FOUNDERS OF THE LAND THIS BIT OF EARTH
+IS DEDICATED FOREVER.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<div class="img" id="fig33">
+<img src="images/pmg009a.jpg" alt="" width="258" height="599" />
+<p class="pcap">Pete Harmon, prospector.
+He walked more than 400
+miles in July to visit Shorty
+Harris when he heard that
+he was ill.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig34">
+<img src="images/pmg009a2.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="572" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD. O. WEIGHT</span>
+Calico, Ghost Town</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xvii">xvii</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig35">
+<img src="images/pmg009b.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="522" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Wild Burro Colt</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig36">
+<img src="images/pmg009c.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="579" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Death Valley&rsquo;s fantastic rock formations
+seen from Auguerreberry&rsquo;s Point.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xviii">xviii</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig37">
+<img src="images/pmg010.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="567" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Old Harmony Borax Works, opposite Furnace Creek.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig38">
+<img src="images/pmg010a.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="465" />
+<p class="pcap">January 2, 1926. We camped our second night out at the
+Phantom City of Rhyolite.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xix">xix</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig39">
+<img src="images/pmg010b.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="441" />
+<p class="pcap">Dublin Gulch, Shoshone. In these dugouts lived Joe Volmer,
+Dobe Charley and Jack Crowley, prospectors.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig40">
+<img src="images/pmg010c.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="560" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Golden Street, Rhyolite</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xx">xx</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig41">
+<img src="images/pmg011.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="460" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Bad Water, here the thirsty drank and died.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig42">
+<img src="images/pmg011a.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="540" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Ballarat, once an important freight station, now sand and sage.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xxi">xxi</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig43">
+<img src="images/pmg011b.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="540" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Stables of Tufa Works used by Twenty Mule Teams,
+where borax was mined.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig44">
+<img src="images/pmg011c.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="550" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY HAROLD O. WEIGHT</span>
+Zabriskie Ruins. Opals may be found in the canyon at right.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xxii">xxii</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig45">
+<img src="images/pmg012.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="538" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Charcoal Pits</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig46">
+<img src="images/pmg012a.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="546" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Typical Death Valley Canyon</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xxiii">xxiii</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig47">
+<img src="images/pmg012b.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="530" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Death Valley sand dunes</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig48">
+<img src="images/pmg012c.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="548" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Effect of prehistoric convulsions</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_xxiv">xxiv</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig49">
+<img src="images/pmg013.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="522" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Furnace Creek wash</p>
+</div>
+<div class="img" id="fig50">
+<img src="images/pmg013a.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="536" />
+<p class="pcap"><span class="ss">COURTESY FRASHER&rsquo;S PHOTO. POMONA, CALIF.</span>
+Ryan, and an abandoned borax mine.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_97">97</div>
+<p>Williams was a Baptist preacher, turned Mountain Man. He had
+guided Fremont through the terrors of the San Juan country and was
+accused of cannibalism when hunger threatened one detachment. Of
+Williams Kit Carson said: &ldquo;In starving times, don&rsquo;t walk ahead of Bill
+Williams.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Williams brought a band of Chaguanosos Indians to Resting Springs
+and made it an outpost for a horse stealing raid. With him were Pegleg
+Smith and Jim Beckwith, the mulatto who after having been a blacksmith
+with Ashley&rsquo;s Fur Traders in 1821, became a famous guide,
+Indian Chief, trader, and scout. (Also called Beckwourth and Beckworth.)</p>
+<p>Leaving Resting Springs, they proceeded through Cajon Pass for their
+loot and on May 14, 1840, Juan Perez, administrator at San Gabriel
+Mission excited Southern California when he announced that every
+ranch between San Gabriel and San Bernardino had been stripped
+of horses. Two days later posses from every settlement in the valley
+started in pursuit. The raiders made it a running battle, defeated several
+detachments, adding the latter&rsquo;s stock and grub to their plunder.</p>
+<p>Five days later, reinforcements were sent from Los Angeles, Chino,
+and other settlements, all under command of Jose Antonio Carrillo&mdash;ancestor
+of the movie celebrity, Leo Carrillo. He had &ldquo;225 horses, 75
+men, 49 guns with braces of pistols, 19 spears, 22 swords and sabers, and
+400 cartridges.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The posse threw fear into the raiders, but didn&rsquo;t catch them, though
+the latter lost half of the stolen horses. At Resting Springs, Carrillo
+found some abandoned clothing, saddles, and cooking utensils. Fifteen
+hundred horses that had died from thirst or lack of food were counted
+during the chase.</p>
+<p>Later, when Pegleg Smith was chided about the high price he demanded
+of an emigrant for a horse, he remarked: &ldquo;Well, the horses
+cost me plenty. I lost half of them getting out of the country and three
+of my best squaws....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The earliest American settler at Resting Springs remembered by old
+timers was Philander Lee, a rough and somewhat eccentric squaw man.
+He was big, straight as a ramrod, afraid of nothing, and of an undetermined
+past. He was there in the early Eighties. He cleared 200 acres,
+raised alfalfa, stock, and some fruit. He had a way of adding the last
+part of his first name to his offspring, Leander and Meander are samples.
+Some of his descendants still live in the country.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_98">98</div>
+<p>It was near Resting Springs Ranch while Phi Lee owned it that
+Jacob Breyfogle, of lost mine fame, was scalped by Hungry Bill&rsquo;s tribesmen.
+The story is told in another chapter.</p>
+<p>Phi Lee&rsquo;s brother, Cub Lee, who added spicy pages to the annals
+of Death Valley country, built the first home erected at Shoshone&mdash;an
+adobe which still stands. It was long the home of the squaw, Ann
+Cowboy. Another brother of Phi Lee was known as &ldquo;Shoemaker&rdquo;
+because he roamed the desert as a cobbler. All were squaw men.</p>
+<p>Cub Lee established a reputation for keeping his word and it was
+said no one ever disputed it and lived. Indians over in Nevada were
+giving a &ldquo;heap big&rdquo; party. His squaw wanted to go. Cub didn&rsquo;t. &ldquo;You
+stay home,&rdquo; he ordered. &ldquo;If you go, I&rsquo;ll kill you.&rdquo; He rode away and
+upon returning, discovered she was absent. He leaped on his cayuse,
+went to the party and found her. Whipping out his gun he killed both
+wife and son, blew the smoke out of his pistol and leisurely rode away.</p>
+<p>But the Nevada officials thought Cub Lee was too meticulous about
+keeping his word and Cub had a brief cooling off period in the pen.</p>
+<p>Pegleg Smith made Resting Springs his headquarters for the greatest
+haul in the history of California horse stealing and reached Cajon Pass
+before the theft was discovered. These horses were driven into Utah
+and there sold to emigrants, traders, and ranchers. Smith may be said to
+be the inventor of the Lost Mine, as a means of getting quick money. The
+credulous are still looking for mines that existed only in Pegleg&rsquo;s fine
+imagination.</p>
+<p>Thomas L. Smith was born at Crab Orchard, Kentucky, October 10,
+1801. With little schooling, he ran away from home to become a
+trapper and hunter, and following the western streams eventually settled
+in Wyoming. He married several squaws, choosing these from different
+tribes, thus insuring friendly alliance with all.</p>
+<p>He had been a member of Le Grand&rsquo;s first trapping expedition to
+Santa Fe and was an associate of such outstanding men as St. Vrain,
+Sublette, Platte, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, the merchant Antoine Rubideaux
+(properly Robedoux) of St. Louis. He spoke several Indian
+languages and earned the gratitude of the Indians in his area by leading
+them to victory in a battle with the Utes. Able and likable, he also had
+iron nerves and courage. His morals, he justified on the ground that his
+were the morals of the day.</p>
+<p>J. G. Bruff, historian, whose &ldquo;Gold Rush-Journal and Drawings&rdquo; is
+good material for research, met Smith on Bear River August 6, 1849,
+and wrote in his diary: &ldquo;Pegleg Smith came into camp. He trades
+whiskey.&rdquo; Actually he traded anything he could lay his hands on.</p>
+<p>While trapping for beaver with St. Vrain on the Platte, Smith was
+<span class="pb" id="Page_99">99</span>
+shot by an Indian, the bullet shattering the bones in his leg just above
+the ankle. He was talking with St. Vrain at the moment and after a
+look at the injury, begged those about to amputate his leg. Having no
+experience his companions refused. He then asked the camp cook to
+bring him a butcher knife and amputated it himself with minor assistance
+by the noted Milton Sublette.</p>
+<p>Smith was then carried on a stretcher to his winter quarters on the
+Green River. While the wound was healing he discovered some bones
+protruding. Sublette pulled them out with a pair of bullet molds.
+Indian remedies procured by his squaws healed the stump and in the
+following spring of 1828 he made a rough wooden leg. Thereafter he
+was called Pegleg by the whites and We-he-to-ca by all Indians.</p>
+<p>A wooden socket was fitted into the stirrup of his saddle and with
+this he could ride as skillfully as before. In the lean, last years of his
+life, he could be seen hopping along under an old beaver hat in San
+Francisco to and from Biggs and Kibbe&rsquo;s corner to Martin Horton&rsquo;s.
+Something in his appearance stamped him as a remarkable man.</p>
+<p>Major Horace Bell, noted western ranger, lawyer, author, and
+editor of early Los Angeles, relates that he saw Pegleg near a Mother
+Lode town, lying drunk on the roadside, straddled by his half-breed
+son who was pounding him in an effort to arouse him from his stupor.</p>
+<p>Smith had little success as a prospector, but saw in man&rsquo;s lust for
+gold, ways to get it easier than the pick and shovel method.</p>
+<p>In the pueblo days of Los Angeles, Smith was a frequent visitor at
+the Bella Union, the leading hotel. Always surrounded by a spellbound
+group, he lived largely. When his money ran out he always had a piece
+of high-grade gold quartz to lure investment in his phantom mine.</p>
+<p>And so we have the Lost Pegleg, located anywhere from Shoshone
+to Tucson. Nevertheless, no adequate story of the movement of civilization
+westward can ignore South Pass and Pegleg Smith.</p>
+<p class="tb">About 25 miles east of Shoshone and set back from the road under
+willows and cottonwoods, an old house identifies a landmark of Pahrump
+Valley&mdash;the Manse Ranch, once owned by the Yundt family.</p>
+<p>The original Yundt was among the first settlers, contemporary with
+Philander and Cub Lee and Aaron Winters. Yundt was a squaw man
+and his children, Sam, Lee, and John followed the father in taking
+squaws for their wives.</p>
+<p>Sam Yundt was operating a small store at Good Springs and making
+a precarious living when a sleek and talented promoter secured a mining
+claim nearby and induced Sam to enlarge his stock in order to care for
+the increased business promised by supplying provisions for the mine&rsquo;s
+<span class="pb" id="Page_100">100</span>
+employees. Sam, with visions of quick, profitable turnovers, stocked
+the empty shelves. For a few months the bills were paid promptly,
+then lagged. Sam yielded to plausible excuses and carried the account.
+Finally his own credit was jeopardized and wholesalers began to
+threaten suits. Then he heard the sheriff had an attachment ready to
+serve. In his desperation Sam went to the debtor. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m ruined,&rdquo; he
+pleaded. &ldquo;You fellows will have to raise some money or we&rsquo;ll all quit
+eating.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The fellow said, &ldquo;All I can give you is stock in the Yellow Pine.
+It&rsquo;s that or nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sam Yundt had done with next to nothing all his life, took the stock
+and waited for the sheriff. Then the miracle&mdash;pay dirt and Sam Yundt
+was rich, and now he did the natural thing. He decided he would live
+at a pace that matched his means.</p>
+<p>George Rose, an old friend, had a mine in the Avawatz and he
+needed money. He went to Sam. &ldquo;Now that you&rsquo;re rich,&rdquo; he told Sam,
+&ldquo;you&rsquo;ll be taking life easy. I&rsquo;ve got some swamp land on the coast near
+Long Beach. Best duck shooting I know of and I&rsquo;ll sell it cheap.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sam didn&rsquo;t want it but he bought it just to accommodate his friend.
+In a little while the swamp land was an oil field and oil added another
+fortune to Yellow Pine&rsquo;s gold. Sam put his squaw Nancy, away, moved
+to the city and married a white woman. Nancy was provided for and
+for years she could be seen driving all over the desert in her buggy.</p>
+<p>A later owner of the Manse was one of whom the writer has a
+revealing memory. A battered Ford stopped at Shoshone and an unshaven
+individual stepped out, went into the store and came out with
+a loaf of bread and a chunk of bologna. Dirty underwear showed
+through a flapping rent in his patched overalls as he tore off a piece of
+bread and a chunk of the bologna and had his meal. The uneaten
+portions he tossed into the tool box, wiped his hands on his thighs
+and his mouth on his hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jean Cazaurang,&rdquo; Brown chuckled, &ldquo;won&rsquo;t pay six bits for lunch
+in the dining room. Worth $2,000,000.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>When the dinner gong sounded Cazaurang went to his tool box,
+retrieved the rest of the bologna, twisted a hunk from the bread loaf,
+tossed the rest back into the tool box. This time he saved a dollar. He
+curled himself up in the Ford that night and saved $2.00. Besides the
+Manse Ranch he had a 10,000 acre ranch in Mexico, stocked with
+sheep, cattle, and horses, and had several mines.</p>
+<p>Jean&rsquo;s end was not a happy one. One payday at his ranch, the good
+looking and likable young Mexican who worked for him, came for his
+money. Jean counted out the money from a poke and poured it into
+<span class="pb" id="Page_101">101</span>
+the palm of the Mexican. The Mexican counted it and with a smile
+looked at Jean. &ldquo;Pardon me, Se&ntilde;or ... it&rsquo;s two bits short.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Be gone,&rdquo; ordered Jean.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But Se&ntilde;or, I have worked hard. My wife is hungry and I am
+hungry. My children are hungry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Be gone,&rdquo; again shouted Jean and whipped out his gun.</p>
+<p>But the Mexican was young, lean, and lithe and he seized Jean&rsquo;s
+wrist and when he turned the wrist loose Jean Cazaurang was dead.
+And then the Mexican made one mistake. Instead of going to the
+sheriff he became panic stricken and taking the body to a nearby ravine,
+he heaved it into the brush where it was found later, feet up.</p>
+<p>But Jean Cazaurang had saved two bits.</p>
+<p>A big luxuriously appointed hearse came for Jean and people said
+it was the first decent ride he&rsquo;d ever had in his life.</p>
+<p>Sentiment was with the Mexican, but he drew a short term for
+bungling.</p>
+<p>Because in one will Jean left his property to his wife and in another
+to his housekeeper, the estate was tied up in court, where it remained for
+11 years&mdash;fat pickings for lawyers. Finally the widow was awarded one
+half the estate under community property law, but the widow was dead.
+The housekeeper got the other half, and so ends the story of Jean
+Cazaurang and two bits.</p>
+<p>Rarely did desert ranches show other profits than those which one
+finds in doing the thing one likes to do, as in the case of a recent owner
+of the Manse&mdash;the wealthy Mrs. Lois Kellogg&mdash;the soft-voiced eastern
+lady who fell in love with the desert, drilled an artesian well, the flow of
+which is among the world&rsquo;s largest. Small, cultured, she yet found
+thrills in driving a 20-ton truck and trailer from the Manse to Los
+Angeles or to the famed Oasis Ranch 200 miles away in Fish Lake
+Valley&mdash;another desert landmark which she bought to further gratify
+her passion for the Big Wide Open.</p>
+<p>And there you have a slice of life as it is on the desert&mdash;one miserably
+dying in his lust for money, one fleeing its solitude; another seeking
+its solace.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_102">102</div>
+<h2 id="c17"><span class="small">Chapter XV</span>
+<br />The Story of Charles Brown</h2>
+<p>The story of Charles Brown and the Shoshone store begins at
+Greenwater. In the transient horde that poured into that town, he was
+the only one who hadn&rsquo;t come for quick, easy money. On his own since
+he was 11 years old, when he&rsquo;d gone to work in a Georgia mine, he
+wanted only a job and got it. In the excited, loose-talking mob he was
+conspicuous because he was silent, calm, unhurried.</p>
+<p>There were no law enforcement officers in Greenwater. The jail
+was 130 miles away and every day was field day for the toughs. Better
+citizens decided finally to do something about it. They petitioned
+George Naylor, Inyo county&rsquo;s sheriff at Independence to appoint or
+send a deputy to keep some semblance of order.</p>
+<p>Naylor sent a badge over and with it a note: &ldquo;Pin it on some
+husky youngster, unmarried and unafraid and tell him to shoot first.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Again the Citizens&rsquo; Committee met. &ldquo;I know a fellow who answers
+that description,&rdquo; one of them said. &ldquo;Steady sort. Built like a panther.
+Came from Georgia. Kinda slow-motioned until he&rsquo;s ready for the
+spring. Name&rsquo;s Brown.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The badge was pinned on Brown.</p>
+<p>Greenwater was a port of call for Death Valley Slim, a character
+of western deserts, who normally was a happy-go-lucky likable fellow.
+But periodically Slim would fill himself with desert likker, his belt with
+six-guns, and terrorize the town.</p>
+<p>Shortly after Brown assumed the duties of his office, Slim sent word
+to the deputy sheriff at Death Valley Junction that he was on his way
+to that place for a little frolic. &ldquo;Tell him,&rdquo; he coached his messenger,
+&ldquo;sheriffs rile me and he&rsquo;d better take a vacation.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After notifying the merchants and the residents, who promptly barricaded
+themselves indoors, the officer found shelter for himself in
+Beatty, Nevada.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_103">103</div>
+<p>So Slim saw only empty streets and barred shutters upon arrival
+and since there was nothing to shoot at he headed through Dead Man&rsquo;s
+Canyon for Greenwater. There he found the main street crowded to
+his liking and the saloons jammed. He made for the nearest, ordered
+a drink and whipping out his gun began to pop the bottles on the
+shelves. At the first blast, patrons made a break for the exits. At the
+second, the doors and windows were smashed and when Slim holstered
+his gun, the place was a wreck.</p>
+<p>Messengers were sent for Brown, who was at his cabin a mile away.
+Brown stuck a pistol into his pocket and went down. He found Slim
+in Wandell&rsquo;s saloon, the town&rsquo;s smartest. There Slim had refused to let
+the patrons leave and with the bartenders cowed, the patrons cornered,
+Slim was amusing himself by shooting alternately at chandeliers, the
+feet of customers and the plump breasts of the nude lady featured in
+the painting behind the bar. Following Brown at a safe distance, was
+half the population, keyed for the massacre.</p>
+<p>Brown walked in. &ldquo;Hello, Slim,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;Fellows tell me
+you&rsquo;re hogging all the fun. Better let me have that gun, hadn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Like hell,&rdquo; Slim sneered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll let you have it right through the
+guts&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As he raised his gun for the kill, the panther sprang and the battle
+was on. They fought all over the barroom&mdash;standing up; lying down;
+rolling over&mdash;first one then the other on top. Tables toppled, chairs
+crashed. For half an hour they battled savagely, finally rolling against
+the bar&mdash;both mauled and bloody. There with his strong vice-like legs
+wrapped around Slim&rsquo;s and an arm of steel gripping neck and shoulder,
+Brown slipped irons over the bad man&rsquo;s wrists. &ldquo;Get up,&rdquo; Brown
+ordered as he stood aside, breathing hard.</p>
+<p>Slim rose, leaned against the bar. There was fight in him still and
+seeing a bottle in front of him, he seized it with manacled hands,
+started to lift it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Slim,&rdquo; Brown said calmly, &ldquo;if you lift that bottle you&rsquo;ll never lift
+another.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The bad boy instinctively knew the look that pages death and Slim&rsquo;s
+fingers fell from the bottle.</p>
+<p>Greenwater had no jail and Brown took him to his own cabin.
+Leaving the manacles on the prisoner he took his shoes, locked them
+in a closet. No man drunk or sober he reflected, would tackle barefoot
+the gravelled street littered with thousands of broken liquor
+bottles. Then he went to bed.</p>
+<p>Waking later, he discovered that Slim had vanished and with him,
+Brown&rsquo;s number 12 shoes. He tried Slim&rsquo;s shoe but couldn&rsquo;t get his
+<span class="pb" id="Page_104">104</span>
+foot into it. There was nothing to do but follow barefoot. He left a
+blood-stained trail, but at 2 a.m. he found Slim in a blacksmith shop
+having the handcuffs removed. Brown retrieved his shoes and on the
+return trip Slim went barefoot. After hog-tying his prisoner Brown
+chained him to the bed and went to sleep.</p>
+<p>Thereafter, the bad boys scratched Greenwater off their calling list.</p>
+<p>Slim afterwards attained fame with Villa in Mexico, became a good
+citizen and later went East, established a sanatorium catering to the
+wealthy and acquired a fortune.</p>
+<p>Among the first arrivals in Greenwater was a lanky adventurer
+known to the Indians as Long Man and to whites for his ability to make
+money in any venture and an even more marvelous inability to keep it.
+He was Ralph Jacobus Fairbanks. Broke at the time, he was seeking
+the quickest way to a &ldquo;comeback.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Foreseeing that the biggest names in copper meant a rush, he had
+taken a look at the little stagnant spring with a green scum that was
+to give the town its name.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not enough water in it to do the family washing,&rdquo; he decided and
+with uncanny talent for seeing opportunity where others would
+starve to death, he was soon peddling water at a dollar a bucket. He
+had hauled it 40 miles uphill from Furnace Creek wash.</p>
+<p>A hopeful, but late arrival who expected to find the town crowded
+with killers was an undertaker who came with a huge stock of coffins.
+The prospect of a quick turnover seemed to guarantee success, but in
+two years Greenwater had exactly one funeral and he sold but one
+coffin. Disgusted he stacked the caskets in the center of his shop; left
+and was never again heard of.</p>
+<p>Fairbanks came into town one day with his sweat-stained 16 mule
+team, noticed the abandoned coffins, picked out the largest and best
+and gave Greenwater its first watering trough, which was used as long
+as the town lasted.</p>
+<p>Fairbanks soon made enough money to acquire a hotel, store, and
+a bar, which became a popular rendezvous. Fairbanks was born of
+well-to-do parents, in a covered wagon en route to Utah in 1857. Of
+the thousands who flocked into Greenwater, only he and Charles
+Brown were to remain in Death Valley country and wrest fortunes from
+America&rsquo;s most desolate region. To Greenwater he brought his wife,
+Celestia Abigail, who shared his spirit of adventure, but fortunately
+for him she possessed a caution which he lacked. Among their children
+was a beautiful and vivacious daughter, Stella.</p>
+<p>Fairbanks, who was of the quick, go-getting type, didn&rsquo;t care for
+Brown. Born in the North, he was critical of the slow-moving, silent,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_105">105</span>
+young Georgian and unacquainted with the Deep South&rsquo;s drawl, he
+referred to him as &ldquo;that damned foreigner.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The reputation of the Fairbanks camaraderie spread, and Mrs. Fairbanks,
+who understood the longing of a youngster for a home-cooked
+meal, invited Brown to dinner.</p>
+<p>There were other young fortune seekers in Greenwater who were
+also occasional guests at the Fairbanks dinners&mdash;among them a Yankee
+from Maine&mdash;Harry Oakes, of whom the world was to hear later. Allen
+Gillman, known as the Rattlesnake Kid, because of his stalking rattlesnakes
+to indulge his hobby of making hat bands and trinkets, later
+to become associated with Bernarr McFadden. Wealthy young mining
+engineers. Bank clerks with futures. Brown apparently had none.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll get out of the country like he came in&mdash;afoot and broke,&rdquo;
+rivals told Stella. So when romance came, there was still a long trail
+ahead.</p>
+<p>Then came Greenwater&rsquo;s first warning of trouble. A few miners
+were laid off; a few padlocks appeared on a few cabins; a few merchants
+complained. Soon it was noticed that the tinny pianos from which slim-fingered
+&ldquo;professors&rdquo; swept the two-step and the waltz were gathering
+dust while the girls lolled in empty honkies. But when Diamond Tooth
+Lil padlocked her door and joined the rush to a new copper strike at
+Crackerjack in the Avawatz Mountains the wiser knew that Greenwater
+was through.</p>
+<p>With no guests Fairbanks told off on his fingers, departed patrons,
+mine owners, doctors, lawyers. &ldquo;Just Charlie left. Wonder what&rsquo;s keeping
+him?&rdquo; Celestia Abigail knew. She knew that the big Georgian was
+desperately in love with Stella and didn&rsquo;t care how many of her suitors
+left.</p>
+<p>With mines closing and few official duties, Brown loaded a burro
+with supplies and with Joe Yerrin went on a prospecting trip. Their
+course led across Death Valley. They were caught in a heat that was
+a record, even for the Big Sink, and ran out of water. Fortunately they
+were within a few miles of Surveyor&rsquo;s Well&mdash;a stagnant hole north of
+Stovepipe. The burros were also suffering and Brown and Yerrin staggered
+to water barely in time to escape death.</p>
+<p>The well there is dug on a slant and looking down they saw a
+prospector kneeling at the water, filling a canteen and blocking passage.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Reckon you fellows are thirsty,&rdquo; he greeted. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll hand you up a
+drink. Have to strain it though. Full of wiggletails.&rdquo; He pulled his
+shirt tail out of his pants, stretched it over a stew pan, strained the
+water through it and handed the pan up to Brown. &ldquo;Now it&rsquo;s fit to
+drink,&rdquo; he said proudly.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_106">106</div>
+<p>&ldquo;It was no time to be finicky,&rdquo; Charlie said. &ldquo;We drank.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Brown and Yerrin combed hill and canyon but failed to find anything
+of value. Yerrin knew of another place. &ldquo;You can have it,&rdquo;
+Brown said. &ldquo;I left a good claim.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Yerrin eyed him a long moment, then grinned: &ldquo;Stella, huh?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The sage in Greenwater streets was rank now and again Ralph Fairbanks
+looked out over the dying town. &ldquo;Ma, we&rsquo;re getting out,&rdquo; he said.
+He emptied his pockets on the table; counted the cash. &ldquo;Ten dollars
+and thirty cents. Can&rsquo;t get far on that&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was interrupted by a knock at the door. There stood a stranger
+who wanted dinner and lodging for the night. During the evening the
+guest disclosed that he was en route to his mining claim near a place
+called Shoshone, 38 miles south. It was near a spring with plenty of
+water, warm, but usable. He wanted to put 50 miners to work but
+first he had to find someone willing to go there and board them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe we&rsquo;d go,&rdquo; Fairbanks said. &ldquo;What&rsquo;ll you pay for board?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A dollar and a half a day. Figures around $2250 a month.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ralph looked at Ma. She nodded. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a deal,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>The next morning the guest left.</p>
+<p>Fairbanks turned to his wife. &ldquo;I can haul these abandoned shacks
+down there in no time. Charlie&rsquo;s not working, I can get him to help.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ralph Fairbanks had stayed with Greenwater to the bitter end. Now
+he hauled it away.</p>
+<p>The road to the new site was over rough desert, gutted with dry
+washes. Brown slept in the brush, put the shacks up while Fairbanks
+went for others. Both worked night and day to get the place ready.
+Finally they had lodging for 50 men, a dining room, and quarters for
+the family. With $2250 a month they could afford a chef and Ma
+could take it easy. Stella could go Outside to a girl&rsquo;s school.</p>
+<p>Then like a bolt of lightning came the bad news. The Greenwater
+guest, they learned, was just an engaging liar, with no mine, no men.
+He was never heard of again.</p>
+<p>Without a dollar they were marooned in one of the world&rsquo;s most
+desolate areas. Stumped, Fairbanks looked at Brown. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been rich.
+I&rsquo;ve been poor. But this is below the belt. What&rsquo;ll we do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can get a job with the Borax Company,&rdquo; Brown said. &ldquo;But you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We have that canned goods we brought to feed that liar&rsquo;s hired
+men. I&rsquo;ll figure some way to live in this God-forsaken hole.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>From the dining room, prepared for the $2250 monthly income, he
+lugged a table, set it outside the door facing the road. Then he went
+to the pantry, filled a laundry basket with the cans of pork and beans,
+tomatoes, corned beef, and milk brought from Greenwater. He arranged
+<span class="pb" id="Page_107">107</span>
+them on the table, wrenched a piece of shook from a packing
+crate and on it painted in crude letters the word, &ldquo;Store.&rdquo; He propped
+it on the table and went inside. &ldquo;Ma,&rdquo; he announced, &ldquo;we&rsquo;re in business.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>You could have hauled the entire stock and the table away in a
+wheelbarrow and every person in the country for 100 miles in either
+direction laid end to end would not have reached as far as a bush
+league batter could knock a baseball.</p>
+<p>The wheelbarrow load of canned goods went to the Indians living
+in the brush and the prospectors camped at the spring. Another replaced
+it and the &ldquo;store&rdquo; moved then into the dining room prepared for the
+non-existent boarders. Powder, a must on the list of a desert store, was
+added. The desert man, they knew, needed only a few items but they
+must be good. Overalls honestly stitched. Bacon well cured. Shoes
+sturdily built for hard usage.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If we sell a shoddy shirt, an inferior pick or shovel to one of our
+customers,&rdquo; they told the wholesaler, &ldquo;we will never again sell anything
+to him nor to any of his friends.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Soon the prospectors were telling other prospectors they met on
+the trails: &ldquo;Square shooters&mdash;those fellows. Speak our language....&rdquo;
+The squaws and the bucks told other squaws and bucks. Soon new
+trails cut across the desert to Shoshone and soon the store outgrew the
+dining room in the Fairbanks residence.</p>
+<p>From Zabriskie, now an abandoned borax town a few miles south of
+Shoshone, an old saloon and boarding house was cut into sections and
+hauled to Shoshone. It had been previously hauled from Greenwater
+where it had served as a labor union hall and club house. It was
+deposited directly across the road from the original store.</p>
+<p>So began in 1910 an empire of trade that is almost unbelievable.</p>
+<p>Charlie had at last coaxed the right answer from Stella but there
+wasn&rsquo;t enough in the business at the start to support two families, plus
+the score of children and grandchildren of Fairbanks. At Greenwater
+he had known all the moguls of mining and he had only to ask for a
+job to get one. Retaining his interest in the Shoshone store he became
+superintendent of the Pacific Borax Company&rsquo;s important Lila C. mine
+and thus formed a connection which grew into valuable friendships with
+the executives. The Shoshone business grew and soon required his
+entire time and that of Stella.</p>
+<p>Born in Richfield, Utah, Stella Brown grew up in Death Valley
+country and a reel of her life would show an exciting story of triumph
+over life in the raw; in desolate deserts and in boom towns where
+bandits and bawdy women rubbed elbows with the virtuous, millionaire
+with crook, and caste was unknown. If a girl went wrong; if an Indian
+<span class="pb" id="Page_108">108</span>
+was starving; a widow in need&mdash;there you would find her. Some day
+somebody will write the inspiring story of Stella Brown.</p>
+<p>Not all those who were told to see Charlie were seeking directions
+or suffering from toothache. When General Electric desperately needed
+talc, its agents were so advised. When Harold Ickes came out to promote
+President Roosevelt&rsquo;s conservation ideas and officials of the War Department
+sought critical material, they too were given the old familiar advice
+and took it, and one day I saw the President of the Southern Pacific
+Railroad stand around for an hour while Charlie waited for a Pahrump
+Indian to make up his mind about a pair of overalls.</p>
+<p>Today the store that started on a kitchen table requires a large
+refrigerating plant and lighting system, three large warehouses, two
+tunnels in a hill. About a dozen employees work in shifts from seven in
+the morning till ten at night, to take care of the store, cabins, and cafe.
+Three big trucks haul oil, gas, powder, and provisions to mines in the
+region. Out of canyon, dry wash, and over dunes they come for every
+imaginable commodity, and get it.</p>
+<p>A millionaire city man who vacations there sat down on the slab
+bench beside Brown, aimlessly whittling. &ldquo;Listen, Charlie,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you get out of this desolation and move to the city where
+you can enjoy yourself?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hell&mdash;&rdquo; Charlie muttered, and went on with his whittling.</p>
+<p>The new store stands upon the site where Ma Fairbanks&rsquo; kitchen
+table displayed the canned goods brought from Greenwater. Modern
+to the minute and air-cooled it would be a credit to any city.</p>
+<p class="tb">Again I heard the old familiar, &ldquo;See Charlie,&rdquo; and while he was
+telling someone how to get to a place no one around had ever heard of,
+I glanced over the Chalfant Register, a Bishop paper, and noticed a letter
+it had published from a lady in Wisconsin seeking information about
+a brother who had gone to Greenwater more than 40 years ago. She
+had never heard of him since.</p>
+<p>When Charlie joined me I called his attention to the letter. &ldquo;I saw
+it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Nobody answered and the editor sent the letter to me.
+I have just written her that the brother who came to find out what
+happened, died suddenly at Tonopah, only a few hours by auto from
+Greenwater. The other brother was killed in a saloon. I knew him and
+the man who killed him.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_109">109</div>
+<h2 id="c18"><span class="small">Chapter XVI</span>
+<br />Long Man, Short Man</h2>
+<p>Before Tonopah, the first, and Greenwater, the last of the boom
+camps, Indians roaming the desert from Utah westward were showing
+trails to two hikos, who were to become symbols for the reckless courage
+needed to exist in the wasteland. They were known as Long Man
+and Short Man.</p>
+<p>Previous pages have given part of the story of Long Man.</p>
+<p>Coming into Death Valley country in the late Nineties, Ralph Jacobus
+Fairbanks wanted to know its water holes, trails, and landmarks.
+He hired Panamint Tom, brother of Hungry Bill, as a guide. Because
+Tom&rsquo;s name was linked with Bill&rsquo;s in stories of missing men, Fairbanks
+carried his six-gun.</p>
+<p>Panamint Tom was also armed. When they reached the rim of
+Death Valley and started down, Fairbanks said, &ldquo;Tom, this is Indian
+country. You know it. I don&rsquo;t. You go first....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Taking no chance on a surprise night attack, he directed the layout
+of the camp so that their beds were safely apart. Each slept with his
+gun. Around the camp fire, Tom nonchalantly confessed that he&rsquo;d had
+to kill five white men.</p>
+<p>The mission accomplished, they started back. When they came
+out of the valley Tom said, &ldquo;Long Man, this is white man&rsquo;s country.
+You know it. I don&rsquo;t. You go first.&rdquo; In after years, referring to their
+trip, Tom said, &ldquo;Long Man, you heap &rsquo;fraid that time.&rdquo; &ldquo;I was,&rdquo; Fairbanks
+confessed. &ldquo;Me too,&rdquo; Tom said.</p>
+<p>When the Goldfield strike was made, Fairbanks saw that a supply
+station on the main line of travel was a surer way to wealth than the
+gamble of digging. He knew of a ranch with good water and luxuriant
+wild hay at Ash Meadows. Hay was worth $200 a ton. The owner had
+abandoned the ranch, however, and moved into the hills. Fairbanks
+could get little information concerning his whereabouts. &ldquo;Up there
+somewhere,&rdquo; he was told, with a gesture indicating 50 miles of sky line.
+But he wanted the hay and started out and by patient inquiry located
+<span class="pb" id="Page_110">110</span>
+his man just before daylight on the second day. &ldquo;What will you give
+for it?&rdquo; the man asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Fairbanks parried, &ldquo;you know it&rsquo;ll cost me as much as the
+ranch is worth to get rid of that wild grass.&rdquo; Having only a vague idea
+of its real worth he had decided to offer $4000, but sensed the man&rsquo;s
+eagerness to sell and started to offer $1000. Suddenly it occurred to
+him that someone else might have made an offer. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go $2000 and not
+a nickel more.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve bought a ranch,&rdquo; the owner said.</p>
+<p>Elated, Fairbanks wrote a contract by candlelight on the spot. Both
+signed and they started back to find a notary. &ldquo;I determined the fellow
+should not get out of my sight until the deed was recorded. If he
+wanted a drink of water, so did I. If he wished to speak to someone, I
+wanted a word with the same man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Finally the deal was closed and Fairbanks started home. Outside,
+he met Ed Metcalf, chuckling.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s so funny, Ed?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Metcalf pointed to the departing seller. &ldquo;He was just telling me
+about being worried to death all morning for fear a sucker he&rsquo;d found
+would get out of his sight. He&rsquo;s been trying to unload his ranch for $500
+and some idiot gave him $2000.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Fairbanks also operated a freighting service to the boom towns in
+the gold belt as far north as Goldfield and Tonopah. Rates were fantastic
+and he made a fortune. He opened Beatty&rsquo;s first cafe in a tent.</p>
+<p>Money was plentiful and after a trip with a 16 mule team over rough
+roads to Goldfield, he was ready for a relaxing change to poker. When
+the white chips are $25, the reds $50, and the blues $500 the
+game is not for pikers and he would bet $10,000 as calmly as he would
+10 cents.</p>
+<p>In such a game one night he found himself sitting beside a player
+who had removed his big overcoat with wide patch pockets and hung
+it on his chair. Fairbanks noticed the fellow had a habit of gathering
+in the discards when he wasn&rsquo;t betting and his deal would follow. He
+also noticed intermittent movements of the fellow&rsquo;s deft fingers to the
+big patch pocket and soon saw that every ace in the deck reposed in
+the pocket.</p>
+<p>Later in the game, Fairbanks opened a jackpot. Every man stayed.
+The crook raised discreetly and most of the players stayed. Fairbanks
+bet $1000.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have to raise you $5000,&rdquo; the crook said.</p>
+<p>Fairbanks met the raise. &ldquo;... and it&rsquo;ll cost you $5000 more,&rdquo; he
+said evenly.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_111">111</div>
+<p>With the confidence that came from the cached aces, the sharper
+shoved out the five, smiled exultantly as he spread four kings and a
+deuce and reached for the pot.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not so fast,&rdquo; Fairbanks said as he laid four aces and a ten on the
+table.</p>
+<p>The crook gave him a quick look. Fairbanks&rsquo; eyes were steady.
+Neither said a word. The crook couldn&rsquo;t. He knew that Fairbanks&rsquo; long
+fingers had found the big patch pocket.</p>
+<p>When three men and a jackass no longer made a crowd in Shoshone,
+Ralph Fairbanks became restless. With a population of 20&mdash;half of it
+his own progeny, he felt that civilization was closing in on him.
+&ldquo;Charlie, I&rsquo;ve been in one place too long....&rdquo; He had now become
+&ldquo;Dad Fairbanks&rdquo; to all who knew him.</p>
+<p>The automobile was being increasingly used in desert travel and
+transcontinental trips were no longer a daring adventure or the result
+of a bet. Sixty miles south of Shoshone there was a wretched road that
+pitched down the washboard slope of one range into a basin, then up
+the gully-crossed slopes of another. Part of the transcontinental highway,
+it was a headache to the traveler. Radiators usually boiled down
+hill and up.</p>
+<p>To this desolate spot went Dad Fairbanks. The hot blasts from the
+dunes of the Devil&rsquo;s Playground and the dry bed of Soda Lake made
+summer a hell and the freezing winds from Providence Mountains
+turned it into a Siberian winter.</p>
+<p>Here in 1928 Dad Fairbanks built cabins and a store and installed
+a gas pump. Water was hauled in. &ldquo;Coming or going,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when
+they reach this place they&rsquo;ve just got to stop, cool the engine, and fill
+up for the hill ahead.&rdquo; The place is Baker on Highway 91.</p>
+<p>Here, as at Shoshone, sales technique was tossed into the ash can.
+Stopping for dinner one day I met Dad coming out of the dining room.
+&ldquo;How&rsquo;s the fare?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are you hungry?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hungry as a bear....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right. Go in. A hungry man can stand anything.&rdquo; Then in an
+undertone he added: &ldquo;Employment agent sent me the world&rsquo;s worst
+cook. Take eggs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Later as we talked in the sheltered driveway a Rolls-Royce limousine
+drove up and a well-fed and smartly tailored tourist stepped out and
+spoke to Dad: &ldquo;Do you know me?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>Dad looked at him hesitantly. &ldquo;Face is familiar.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You loaned me $300, 25 years ago.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I loaned a lotta fellows money.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_112">112</div>
+<p>&ldquo;But I never paid it back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A helluva lot of &rsquo;em didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Dad said.</p>
+<p>The stranger reached into his pocket, pulled $1000 from a roll and
+handed it to Dad. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m Harry Oakes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s Ma?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So they went over to Dad&rsquo;s house and with Ma Fairbanks who had
+shared all of Dad&rsquo;s fortunes, good and bad, they sat down and Oakes
+talked of the long trail that led from 300 borrowed dollars to an annual
+income of five million.</p>
+<p>Harry Oakes had gone to Canada and learning that the legal title
+to a mining claim would expire at midnight on a certain date, he and
+his partner W. G. Wright sat up in a temperature of forty below, to
+relocate the Lakeshore Mine&mdash;Canada&rsquo;s richest gold property.</p>
+<p>Born in Maine, Harry Oakes became a subject of England and was
+at this time Canada&rsquo;s richest citizen, with an estimated fortune of
+$200,000,000.</p>
+<p>It was a long way from the Niagara palace back to Greenwater
+and Shoshone and as Ma Fairbanks and Dad and Harry sat in the
+plain little desert cottage, I couldn&rsquo;t keep from wondering why a man
+with $200,000,000 would wait 25 years to repay that $300.</p>
+<p>In his native town of Sangerville in Maine, Harry Oakes was criticized
+when, as a youngster with every opportunity to pursue a successful
+career according to the staid Maine formula, he became excited
+by gold. &ldquo;Quick easy money.&rdquo; &ldquo;Just a dreamer.&rdquo; He talked big, acted
+big, and was big.</p>
+<p>But Harry Oakes started out in life to make a fortune by finding
+a gold mine and you can&rsquo;t laugh aside the determination and courage
+with which he stuck to his purpose until he succeeded.</p>
+<p>Dad Fairbanks spent nearly 50 years in Death Valley country and
+it is a bit ironical that at last, the Baker climate drove him from the
+desert to Santa Paula and later, of all places, to Hollywood.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should never have believed it of you,&rdquo; I kidded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hell&mdash;&rdquo; Dad retorted, &ldquo;I wanted solitude. Haven&rsquo;t you got enough
+sense to know that the lonesomest place on Godamighty&rsquo;s earth is a
+city?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He died in 1943 and at the funeral were the state&rsquo;s greatest men
+and its humblest&mdash;bankers, lawyers, doctors, beggarmen, muckers and
+miners, and with them, those he loved best&mdash;sun-baked fellows from the
+towns and the gulches along the burro trails. No man who has lived in
+Death Valley country did more to put the region on the must list of the
+American tourist and none won more of the regard and affections of the
+people.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_113">113</div>
+<h2 id="c19"><span class="small">Chapter XVII</span>
+<br />Shorty Frank Harris</h2>
+<p>No history of Death Valley has been written in this century without
+mention of the Short Man&mdash;Frank (Shorty) Harris&mdash;and none can be.
+Previous pages have given most of his story. After his death at least two
+hurried writers who never saw him have stated that Shorty discovered
+no mines, knew little of the country.</p>
+<p>From a page of notes made before I had ever met him, I find this
+record: &ldquo;Stopped at Independence to see George Naylor, early Inyo
+county sheriff and now its treasurer. We talked of early prospectors.
+Naylor said: &lsquo;I have known all of the old time burro men and have the
+records. Shorty Harris has put more towns on the map and more
+taxable property on the assessors&rsquo; books than any of them.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I first met Shorty at Shoshone. Entering the store one day, Charles
+Brown told me there was a fellow outside I ought to know, and in a
+moment I was looking into keen steady eyes&mdash;blue as water in a canyon
+pool&mdash;and in another Shorty Harris was telling me how to sneak up on
+$10,000,000. Thus began an acquaintance which was to lead me
+through many years from one end of Death Valley to the other, with
+Shorty, mentor, friend, and guide.</p>
+<p>Of course I had heard of him. Who hadn&rsquo;t? In the gold country of
+western deserts one could find a few who had never heard of Cecil
+Rhodes or John Hays Hammond, but none who had not heard of
+Shorty Harris. Wherever mining men gathered, the mention of his
+name evoked the familiar, &ldquo;That reminds me,&rdquo; and the air thickened
+with history, laughter, and lies.</p>
+<p>He was five feet tall, quick of motion. Hands and feet small. Skin
+soft and surprisingly fair. Muscles hard as bull quartz. With a mask
+of ignorance he concealed a fine intelligence reserved for intimate
+friends in moments of repose.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_114">114</div>
+<p>It is regrettable that since Shorty&rsquo;s death, writers who never saw
+him have given pictures of him which by no stretch of the imagination
+can be recognized by those who had even a slight acquaintance with
+him. Authors of books properly examine the material of those who
+have written other books. In the case of Shorty this was eagerly done&mdash;so
+eagerly in fact, that each portrayal is the original picture altered
+according to the ability of the one who tailors the tale. All are interesting
+but few have any relation to truth.</p>
+<p>Shorty Harris was so widely publicized by writers in the early part
+of the century that when the radio was invented, he was a &ldquo;natural&rdquo;
+for playlets and columnists. It was natural also that the iconoclast appear
+to set the world right. He employed Shorty to guide him through Death
+Valley. &ldquo;I want to write a book,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;and I have only three
+weeks to gather material.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The trip ended sooner. &ldquo;What happened?&rdquo; I asked Shorty when I
+read the book and was startled to see in it a statement that Shorty became
+lost; had never found a mine; and never even looked for one.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did he say that?&rdquo; Shorty laughed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And more of the same,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, let&rsquo;s let it go for what it&rsquo;s worth.... He bellyached from
+the minute we set out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Those who knew Shorty best&mdash;Dad Fairbanks, Charles Brown, Bob
+Montgomery, George Naylor, H. W. Eichbaum, and the old timers on
+the trails had entirely different impressions. There was, however, around
+the barrooms of Beatty and other border villages a breed of later
+comers&mdash;&ldquo;professional&rdquo; old timers always waiting and often succeeding
+in exchanging &ldquo;history&rdquo; for free drinks. Though they may have never
+known Shorty in person, they were not lacking in yarns about him and
+rarely failed to get an audience.</p>
+<p>There were also among Shorty&rsquo;s friends a few who had another
+attitude. &ldquo;What has he ever done that I haven&rsquo;t?&rdquo; the answer being that
+nothing had been written about them.</p>
+<p>With variations the original pattern became the pattern for the succeeding
+writer. In the interest of accuracy it is not amiss to say that
+Shorty Harris was not buried standing up. The writer saw him buried.
+It is not true that he ever protested the removal of the road from the
+site of the place where he wished to be buried, because he never knew
+that he would be buried there. Nor did he have the remotest idea that
+a monument would be erected to him, because the idea of the monument
+was born after his death, as related elsewhere.</p>
+<p>He did not leave Harrisburg on July 4, 1905 to get drunk at
+<span class="pb" id="Page_115">115</span>
+Ballarat. Instead, he went to Rhyolite to find Wild Bill Corcoran, his
+grubstaker.</p>
+<p>He did enjoy the yarns attributed to him and their publication in
+important periodicals. But he was also painfully shy and ill at ease away
+from his home. Even at the annual Death Valley picnics held at Wilmington,
+near Los Angeles, he could never be persuaded to face the
+crowds.</p>
+<p>One cannot laugh aside the part he played nor the monument that
+honors one of God&rsquo;s humblest. His strike at Rhyolite brought two railroads
+across the desert, gave profitable employment to thousands of men,
+added extra shifts in steel mills and factories making heavy machinery
+and those of tool makers. The building trades felt it, banks, security exchanges,
+and scores of other industries over the nation&mdash;all because
+Shorty Harris went up a canyon. And it is not amiss to ask if these historians
+did their jobs as well.</p>
+<p>At my home it was difficult to get Shorty to accept invitations to
+dinners to which he was often invited by service clubs, but in the Ballarat
+cabin he was as sure of himself as the MacGregor with a foot upon
+his native heath and an eye on Ben Lomond.</p>
+<p>His passion for prospecting was fanatical. I asked him once if he
+would choose prospecting as a career if he had his life to live over.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t change places with the President of the United States.
+My only regret is that I didn&rsquo;t start sooner. When I go out, every time
+my foot touches the ground, I think &lsquo;before the sun goes down I&rsquo;ll be
+worth $10,000,000.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t get it,&rdquo; I reminded him.</p>
+<p>He stared at me with a sort of &ldquo;you&rsquo;re-too-dumb&rdquo; look. &ldquo;Who in
+the hell wants $10,000,000? It&rsquo;s the game, man&mdash;the game.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Nor is the picture of his profligacy altogether true. Despite Shorty&rsquo;s
+disregard for money he had a canniness that made him cache something
+against the rainy day. At Lone Pine Charlie Brown was packing Shorty&rsquo;s
+suit case before taking him to a doctor. &ldquo;Shorty, what&rsquo;s this lump in the
+lining of your vest?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, there was a hole in it. Poor job of mending I guess,&rdquo; Shorty
+answered guilelessly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll see,&rdquo; Charlie said and ripping a few stitches removed $600 in
+currency.</p>
+<p>Shorty&rsquo;s last years furnish a story of a man too tough to die. He had
+had three major operations, when in 1933 I received the following
+telegram: &ldquo;Wall fell on me. Hurry. Bring doctor. Shorty Harris.&rdquo; It
+had been sent by Fred Gray from Trona, 27 miles from Ballarat, nearest
+telegraph station.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_116">116</div>
+<p>My wife and I hurried through rain, snow, sleet; over washed out
+desert and mountain roads. Outside the cabin in the dusk, shivering in a
+cold wind, we found two or three of Shorty&rsquo;s friends and Charles and
+Mrs. Brown, who had also made a mad dash of 150 miles over roads&mdash;some
+of which hadn&rsquo;t been traveled in 30 years.</p>
+<p>Puttering around his cabin, Shorty had jerked at a wire anchored
+in the walls and brought tons of adobe down upon himself. He was
+literally dug out, his ribs crushed, face black with abrasions. With
+rapidly developing pneumonia he had lain for 60 hours without medical
+attention and with nothing to relieve pain. We learned later from Dr.
+Walter Johnson, who had preceded us, that if a hospital had been within
+a block it would have been fatal to move him. All agreed that Death sat
+on Shorty&rsquo;s bedside.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A cat has only nine lives,&rdquo; Fred Gray said gravely, and outside in
+the gathering gloom we planned his funeral. Because of the isolation of
+Ballarat and lack of communication we arranged that when the end
+came, Fred Gray would notify Brown and bring the body down into
+Death Valley for burial. There we would meet the hearse.</p>
+<p>Because bodies decompose quickly in that climate, time was important.
+While we planned these details, my wife, who had been at Shorty&rsquo;s
+bedside, joined us. &ldquo;Shorty&rsquo;s not going to die,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s planning
+that trip up Signal Mountain you and he have been talking about.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I tiptoed into the room. He was staring at the ceiling, seeing faraway
+canyons; the yellow fleck in a broken rock. Suddenly he spoke:
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m losing a thousand dollars a day lying here. Why, that ledge&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A week after returning to our home we received another telegram
+from Trona asking that we come for him. He had insisted upon being
+laid in the bed of a pickup truck and taken across the Slate Range to
+Trona, where we met him.</p>
+<p>At our home he lay on his back for weeks, fed with a spoon. Always
+talking of putting another town on the map. Always losing a million
+dollars a day. He was miraculously but slowly recovering when an
+Associated Press dispatch bearing a Lone Pine date made front page
+headlines with an announcement of his death.</p>
+<p>Though the report was quickly corrected, his presence at our house
+brought reporters, photographers, old friends, and the merely curious.
+At the time the Pacific Coast Borax Company&rsquo;s N.B.C. program was
+featuring stories based on his experiences over a nation-wide hook-up.
+Among the callers also were moguls of mining and tycoons of industry
+who had stopped at the Ballarat cabin to fall under the spell of his ever
+ready yarns.</p>
+<p>Among these guests, one stands out.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_117">117</div>
+<p>It was a hot summer day when I saw on the lawn what appeared
+to be a big bear, because the squat, bulky figure was enclosed in fur.
+Answering the door bell I looked into twinkling eyes and an ingratiating
+smile. &ldquo;They told me in Ballarat that Shorty Harris was here.&rdquo; I
+invited him in.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll just shed this coat,&rdquo; he said, stripping off the bearskin garment.
+&ldquo;... sorta heavy for a man going on 80.&rdquo; He laid it aside.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s double lined. Fur inside and out. You see, I sleep in it. Crossed
+three mountain ranges in that coat before I got here. May as well take
+this other one off too.&rdquo; He removed another heavy overcoat, revealing
+a cord around his waist. &ldquo;Keep this one tied close. Less bulky....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Under a shorter coat was a heavy woolen shirt and his overalls
+concealed two pairs of pants. He went on: &ldquo;I was with Shorty at
+Leadville. My name&rsquo;s Pete Harmon. We ought to be rich&mdash;both of
+us. Why, I sold a hole for $2500 in 1878. Thought I was smart.
+They&rsquo;ve got over $100,000,000 outa that hole. I was at Bridgeport
+when I heard Shorty was sick, so I says, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll just step down to Ballarat
+and see him.&rsquo; (The &lsquo;step&rsquo; was 298 miles.) When I got there Bob
+Warnack tells me he&rsquo;s in Los Angeles. When I get there they tell me
+he&rsquo;s with you. So I just stepped out here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He had &ldquo;stepped&rdquo; 481 miles to see his friend.</p>
+<p>I ushered him in and left them alone. After an hour I noticed Pete
+outside, smoking. I went out and urged him to return and smoke
+inside, but he refused. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not manners,&rdquo; he insisted.</p>
+<p>Later I happened to look out the window and saw him empty the
+contents of a small canvas sack into his hand. There were a few dimes
+and nickels and two bills. He unfolded the currency. One was a
+twenty. The other, a one. He put the coins in the sack and came
+inside. A few moments later, from an adjacent room I heard his soft,
+lowered voice: &ldquo;Shorty, I&rsquo;m eatin&rsquo; reg&rsquo;lar now and got a little besides.
+I reckon you&rsquo;re kinda shy. You take this.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No&mdash;no, Pete. I&rsquo;m getting along fine....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I fancy there was a scurry among the angels to make that credit for
+Pete Harmon.</p>
+<p>Late in the afternoon Pete donned his coats. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d better be going.
+I&rsquo;ve got a lotta things on hand. A claim in the Argus. When the money
+comes in, well&mdash;I always said I was going to build a scenic railroad
+right on the crest of Panamint Range. Best view of Death Valley.
+It&rsquo;ll pay. How far is it to San Diego?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A hundred and forty miles....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, since I&rsquo;m this far along I&rsquo;ll just step down and see my old
+partner. Take care of Shorty....&rdquo; And down the road he went.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_118">118</div>
+<p>With humility I watched his passage, hoping that the good God
+would go with him and somehow I felt that of all those with fame and
+wealth or of high degree who had gone from that house, none had left
+so much in my heart as Pete.</p>
+<p>During this period of convalescence Shorty was often guest in homes
+of luxury and when at last I took him to Ballarat I was curious to see
+what his reaction would be to the squalor of the crumbling cabin.</p>
+<p>When we stepped from the car, he noticed Camel, the blind burro
+drowsing in the shade of a roofless dobe. &ldquo;Old fellow,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+dam&rsquo; good to see <i>you</i> again....&rdquo; I unloaded the car, brought water
+from the well and sat down to rest. Shorty sat in a rickety rocker
+braced with baling wire. I regarded with amusement the old underwear
+which he&rsquo;d stuffed into broken panes; the bare splintered floor; the
+cracked iron stove that served both for cooking and heating. The wood
+box beside it. The tin wash pan on a bench at the door.</p>
+<p>Then I noticed Shorty was also appraising the things about&mdash;the
+hole in the roof; the box nailed to the wall that served as a cupboard.
+A half-burned candle by his sagging bed. For a long time he glanced
+affectionately from one familiar object to another and finally spoke:
+&ldquo;Will, haven&rsquo;t I got a dam&rsquo; fine home?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For ages poets have sung, orators have lauded, but so far as I&rsquo;m
+concerned, Shorty said it better.</p>
+<p>The last orders from the surgeon had been, &ldquo;Complete rest for
+three months.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the late afternoon we moved our chairs outside. The sun still
+shone in the canyons and after he had seen that all his peaks were in
+place, he turned to me: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m losing $5,000,000 a day sitting here.
+Soon as you&rsquo;re rested, we&rsquo;ll start. You&rsquo;ll be in shape by day after
+tomorrow, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I restrained a gasp as he pointed to the side of a gorge 8000 feet up
+on Signal Mountain. &ldquo;No trip at all....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>No argument could convince him that the trip was foolhardy and
+on the third day we started through Hall&rsquo;s Canyon opposite the Indian
+Ranch. The ascent from the canyon is so steep that in many places we
+had to crawl on hands and knees. The three and a half miles were made
+in seven hours, but on the return the inevitable happened. Shorty, exhausted,
+staggered from the trail and collapsed. When he rose, he
+wobbled, but managed to reach a bush and rolled under it. I ran to his
+side. It seemed the end. &ldquo;You go ahead,&rdquo; he said weakly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m through.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I had given him all my water and exacting a promise that he would
+remain under the bush, I started for help at the Indian Ranch, to bring
+him out.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_119">119</div>
+<p>Coming up, I had paid no attention to the trail and was uncertain
+of my way&mdash;which was further confused by criss-crossed trails of wild
+burros and mountain sheep. Coming to a canyon that forked, I was
+not sure which to take and panicked with fear took a sudden uncalculated
+choice and started up a trail. The desert gods must have guided
+my feet, for it proved to be the right one and an hour later I came upon
+the green seepage of water.</p>
+<p>I dug a hole; let the scum run off then drank slowly and lay down
+to rest. In my last conscious moment a huge rattler passed within a
+few inches of my face. But rattlers were unimportant then and I went
+to sleep.</p>
+<p>The swish of brush awoke me and I saw Shorty staggering down
+the trail. He fell beside the water and was instantly asleep. Time I knew,
+was the measure of life and I allowed him twenty minutes to rest, then
+awoke him and made him go in front. On a ledge, he slumped again,
+his body hanging over the cliff with a 1000 foot fall to rocks below.</p>
+<p>I managed to catch him by the seat of his trousers as he began to
+slip, and dragged him back on the trail. Somehow I got him to the
+bottom. There the canyon widens upon a level area covered with dense
+growth. Walking ahead I suddenly missed him. He had crawled from
+the trail and it required an hour to find him and this I did by the noise
+of his rattly breathing.</p>
+<p>I half carried, half dragged him to the car and lifted him in. He
+was asleep before I could close the door and remained unconscious for
+the entire 11 miles of corduroy road to Ballarat. There Fred Gray and
+Bob Warnack lifted him from the car and laid him on his bed. None of
+us believed that Shorty Harris would ever leave that bed alive.</p>
+<p>The next morning I tiptoed softly out of the room, went over to the
+old saloon and had breakfast with Tom, the caretaker. Afterward we
+sat outside smoking and talking of Hungry Hattie&rsquo;s feuding and her
+sister&rsquo;s mining deals, when we heard steady thumping sounds coming
+from Shorty&rsquo;s place. We looked. Bareheaded, Shorty Harris was chopping
+wood.</p>
+<p>Shorty was born near Providence, Rhode Island, July 2, 1856. He
+had only a hazy memory of his parents. His father, a shoemaker, died
+impoverished when Shorty was six years old. &ldquo;... I went to live with
+my aunt. If she couldn&rsquo;t catch me doing something, she figured I&rsquo;d
+outsmarted her and beat me up on general principles.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At nine he ran away and obtained work in the textile mills of
+Governor William Sprague, dipping calico. The village priest taught
+him to read and write and apart from this, his only school was the
+alley. The curriculum of the alley is hunger, tears, and pain but somehow
+<span class="pb" id="Page_120">120</span>
+in that alley he found time to play and learned that with play came
+laughter. Thenceforth life to Shorty Harris was just one long playday.</p>
+<p>In 1876 he started West and crawled out of a boxcar in Dodge
+City, Kansas. About were stacks of buffalo hides, bellowing cattle,
+&ldquo;chippies,&rdquo; gamblers, cow hands, and a chance for youngsters who had
+come out of alleys.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;... Among those I remember at Dodge City were my friends
+Wyatt Earp and a thin fellow with a cough. If he liked you he&rsquo;d go
+to hell for you. He was Doc Holliday&mdash;the coldest killer in the West.
+I had a job in a livery stable. Job was all right, but too much gunplay.
+Cowboys shooting up the town. Gamblers shooting cowboys.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Flushed with his pay check, Shorty wandered into a saloon and met
+one of the percentage girls&mdash;a lovely creature, not altogether bad. They
+danced and Shorty suggested a stroll in the moonlight. And soon Shorty
+was in love.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shorty,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;why be a sucker? Why don&rsquo;t you go to Leadville?
+You might find a good claim.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m broke,&rdquo; he told her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got some money,&rdquo; she said, and reached into her purse.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m no mac,&rdquo; he snapped.</p>
+<p>Finally she thrust the bills into his pocket.</p>
+<p>At Leadville he went up a gulch. Luck was kind. He found a good
+claim and going into Leadville sold it for $15,000. Later it produced
+millions. Within a week he was penniless. &ldquo;Why, all I&rsquo;ve got to do is
+to go up another gulch,&rdquo; he told sympathetic friends.</p>
+<p>On this trip his feet were frozen and he was carried out on the back
+of his partner. Taken to the hospital, the surgeon told him that only
+the amputation of both feet could save his life.</p>
+<p>Telling a group of friends about it in the Ballarat cabin later, Shorty
+of course had to add a few details of his own: &ldquo;Dan Driscoll came to
+see me and I told him what the sawbones said. &lsquo;Why hell,&rsquo; Dan says.
+&lsquo;Won&rsquo;t be nothing left of you. You&rsquo;ve got to get outa here. When that
+nurse goes, I&rsquo;ll take you to a doc who&rsquo;ll save them feet.&rsquo; And the first
+thing I knew I was in the other hospital.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The doc whetted his meat cleaver, picked up a saw and was about
+to go to work, when he found there was nothing to dope me with. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll
+fix it,&rsquo; Doc says, and wham&mdash;he slapped me stiff. I don&rsquo;t know what he
+did, but when I came to I was good as new.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After selling a second claim to Haw Tabor, Shorty was again in
+the money and remembered the girl in Dodge City. Returning, he
+looked her up, took her to dinner. They danced and dined and Shorty
+toasted her in &ldquo;bubble water.&rdquo; &ldquo;I reckon everybody in Dodge City
+<span class="pb" id="Page_121">121</span>
+thought a caliph had come to town. No little girl suffered for new toggery.
+No bum lacked a tip. In a week I was broke again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Going down to the freight yard to steal a ride on the rods I met
+the girl and the next I knew, I was begging her to marry me. &lsquo;Shorty,
+you don&rsquo;t know anything about my past, and still you want to marry
+me?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You don&rsquo;t know anything about my past either,&rsquo; I said.
+But it was no go.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Years afterward when Shorty and I were camped in Hall Canyon,
+I asked him if he would actually have married a girl like her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who am I to count slips?&rdquo; he bristled. &ldquo;I did ask her,&rdquo; and he
+swabbed a tear that had dried fifty years ago.</p>
+<p>In 1898, after working for a grubstake he started on the trip
+that led at last to Death Valley, by way of the San Juan country&mdash;one
+of the world&rsquo;s roughest regions. &ldquo;I walked through Arizona, to
+Northern Mexico&mdash;every mile of it desert. A labor strike in Colonel
+Green&rsquo;s mines threw me out of a job and I started back. Ran out of
+water and lived five days on the juice of a bulbous plant&mdash;la Flora
+Morada. Each bulb has a few drops.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On the Mojave I ran out of water again. Finally saw a mangy old
+camel drinking at a pool. I had enough sense left to know there were
+no camels around and went on till I flopped. A fellow picked me up.
+I told him I&rsquo;d been so goofy I&rsquo;d seen a camel and water, but I knew
+it was just a mirage. &lsquo;You damned fool,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;It was a camel and
+you saw water. Hi Jolly turned that camel loose.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Shorty reached Tintic, Utah, and from there walked over a waterless
+desert to the Johnnie mine, where he was given shelter, food, and
+clothing.</p>
+<p>Bishop Cannon of the Mormon Church sent him into the Panamint
+to monument a gold claim. &ldquo;I was the only fool they could find to cross
+Death Valley in mid summer. I found the claim but it proved to be
+patented land.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Shorty was recuperating from his last operation at my home when
+he came into the house one morning with fire in his eyes and a paper
+in his hand. &ldquo;Read that and let&rsquo;s get going.&rdquo; (It has been erroneously
+stated that Shorty couldn&rsquo;t read. Though he had little schooling and
+a cataract impaired his sight, he could read to the end.)</p>
+<p>The paper announced a strike in Tuba Canyon near Ballarat. &ldquo;Why,
+I know a place nobody ever saw but me and a few eagles....&rdquo; His
+losses increased from a thousand to a million dollars a day because
+he wasn&rsquo;t on the job, and in May we started for Ballarat by the longer
+route through Death Valley.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_122">122</div>
+<p>When we reached Jim Dayton&rsquo;s grave, he asked me to stop and
+getting out of the car, he walked into the brush, returning with a few
+yellow and blue wild flowers, laid them on Dayton&rsquo;s grave. &ldquo;God bless
+you, old fellow. You&rsquo;ll have to move over soon and make room for me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then turning to me, he said: &ldquo;When I die bury me beside old Jim.&rdquo;
+Raising his hand and moving his finger as if he were writing the words,
+he added: &ldquo;Above me write, &lsquo;Here lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket
+jackass prospector.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was his way of saying he had played his game&mdash;not by riding over
+the desert with a deluxe camping outfit, but the hard way&mdash;with beans
+and a single blanket. He was also saying, I think, goodbye to the Death
+Valley that he loved; its golden dunes, its creeping canyons and pots of
+gold.</p>
+<p>About one o&rsquo;clock in the morning, Sunday, November 11, 1934, the
+phone awakened me. At the other end of the line was Charles Brown.
+Shorty Harris lay dead at Big Pine. &ldquo;He just went to sleep and didn&rsquo;t
+wake up,&rdquo; Charlie said.</p>
+<p>Shorty had died Saturday morning, November 10, and Charlie had
+arranged for the remains to be brought down into Death Valley and
+buried beside James Dayton Sunday afternoon.</p>
+<p>Out of Los Angeles, out of towns and settlements, canyons, and hills
+came the largest crowd that had ever assembled in Death Valley, to wait
+at Furnace Creek Ranch for the hearse that would come nearly 200 miles
+over the mountains from Big Pine. It was delayed at every village and
+by burro-men along the road, who wanted a last look upon the face of
+Shorty.</p>
+<p>At one o&rsquo;clock the caravan arrived and then began the procession
+down the valley. The sun was setting and the shadows of the Panamint
+lay halfway across the valley when the grave was reached. Brown had
+sent Ernest Huhn from Shoshone the night previous, a distance of
+about 60 miles, to dig the grave.</p>
+<p>On the desert a man dies and gets his measure of earth&mdash;often with
+not so much as a tarpaulin. With this in mind Ernie had made the
+hole to fit the man, but with the coffin it was a foot too short. While
+waiting for the grave to be lengthened, the casket was opened and in
+the fading twilight Shorty&rsquo;s friends passed in file about the casket, while
+the Indians, silhouetted against the brush paid silent tribute to him
+whom their fathers and now their children knew as &ldquo;Short Man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So began the first funeral ever held in the bottom of Death Valley.
+Drama, packed into a few moments of a dying day. No discordant
+ballyhoo. No persiflage.... &ldquo;The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not
+<span class="pb" id="Page_123">123</span>
+want....&rdquo; A bugler stepped beside the grave and silvered notes of
+taps went over the valley. The casket was lowered into the grave as
+the stars came out, and he was covered with the earth he loved. Thoughtful
+women placed wreaths of athol and desert holly and, with his face
+toward his desert stars, Shorty Harris holed-in forever.</p>
+<p>Going back to Shoshone with the Browns, I told Charlie of the
+time I had stopped at Jim Dayton&rsquo;s grave with Shorty. &ldquo;I made up my
+mind then that I would do something about his last wish. There&rsquo;s no
+liar like a tombstone, but Shorty deserves a marker.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll join you,&rdquo; Charlie said.</p>
+<p>Charlie consulted Park officials and they approved. Chosen to write
+the epitaph, I knew from the moment the task was assigned to me what
+it would be. In order to get the reaction of others to the use of the word
+&ldquo;jackass&rdquo; on the monument, I decided to try it out on the Browns. &ldquo;This
+epitaph,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;may be unconventional, but unless I am mistaken it
+will be quoted around the world.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I read it. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; Mrs. Brown laughed. Charlie approved.
+The epitaph, as predicted has been quoted and pictures of the plaque
+published around the world.</p>
+<p>It has been stated that the Pacific Coast Borax Company paid for
+the monument. Actually it was provided by the Park Service. I had
+the bronze tablet made in Pomona, California, and Charlie Brown
+insisted that he pay for it. &ldquo;Shorty left a little money,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Whatever
+is lacking, I will pay myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On March 14, 1936, the monument was dedicated. Streamers of
+dust rolled along every road that led into the Big Sink trailing cars that
+were bringing friends from all walks of life to pay tribute to Shorty.
+At the grave the rich and the famous stood beside the tottering prospector,
+the husky miner, the silent, stoic Indian. Brown was master of
+ceremonies. Telegrams were read from John Hays Hammond and other
+distinguished friends. Old timers, whose memories spanned 30 years, one
+after another wedged through the crowd to tell a funny story that Shorty
+had told or some homely incident of his career.</p>
+<p>One was revealing: &ldquo;We had the no-&rsquo;countest, low-downest hooch
+drinking loafer on the desert at Ballarat. We called him Tarfinger. He
+came over to Shorty&rsquo;s cabin one day and said he was hungry. Shorty
+loaned him $5.00. When I heard about it I went over. I said, &lsquo;You
+know he&rsquo;s a no-good loafing thief.&rsquo; I figured I was doing Shorty a
+favor. Instead, he blew up. &lsquo;Well, he can get as hungry as an honest
+man, can&rsquo;t he?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_124">124</div>
+<p>They understood what O. Henry meant when he sang:</p>
+<div class="verse">
+<p class="t0">&ldquo;Test the man if his heart be</p>
+<p class="t0">In accord with the ultimate plan,</p>
+<p class="t0">That he be not to his marring,</p>
+<p class="t0">Always and utterly man.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<p>The epitaph Shorty Harris wanted seemed fitting: &ldquo;<i>Above me write,
+&lsquo;Here lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket jackass prospector.&rsquo;</i>&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As I turned away I thought of the monuments erected to dead
+Caesars who had left trails of blood and ruin. Shorty Harris simply
+followed a jackass into far horizons, and by leaving a smile at every
+water hole, a pleasant memory on every trail, attained a fame which
+will last as long as the annals of Death Valley.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_125">125</div>
+<h2 id="c20"><span class="small">Chapter XVIII</span>
+<br />A Million Dollar Poker Game</h2>
+<p>Herman Jones, young Texan with keen blue eyes and a guileless
+grin, dropped off the train at Johnnie, a railroad siding, named for the
+nearby Johnnie mine. At the ripe age of 21 he had been through a
+shooting war between New Mexico cattle men, and needing money to
+marry the prettiest girl in the territory, he had come for gold.</p>
+<p>Finding it lonesome on his first night he sought the diversion of a
+poker game in a saloon and gambling house. He bought a stack of
+chips, sat down facing the bar and a moment later another stranger
+entered, inquired if he could join the game.</p>
+<p>Told that $20 would get a seat, the stranger standing with his back
+to the bar was reaching for his purse when Herman saw the bartender
+pick up a six-gun. With his elbows on the bar and his pistol in two
+hands, he aimed the gun at the back of the stranger&rsquo;s head and pulled
+the trigger.</p>
+<p>The victim dropped instantly to the floor, his brains scattered on
+the players. The poker session adjourned and Jones was standing outside
+a few moments later when he was tapped on the shoulder. &ldquo;Come
+on,&rdquo; he was told. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re giving that fellow a floater.&rdquo; Herman didn&rsquo;t
+know what a floater was, but decided it was best to obey orders and followed
+the leader into the saloon.</p>
+<p>Approaching the bartender, the spokesman pulled out his watch.
+&ldquo;Bob,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s six o&rsquo;clock. It won&rsquo;t be healthy around here
+after 6:30.&rdquo; He set a canteen on the bar and walked out.</p>
+<p>Without a word, the bartender pulled off his coat, gathered up the
+cash, called the painted lady attached to his fortune and said, &ldquo;Sell out
+for what you can get. I&rsquo;ll let you know where I am.&rdquo; Picking up his hat
+he left. No one ever learned the cause of the murder or the identity
+of the dead.</p>
+<p>With no luck in the Johnnie district or at Greenwater, Herman left
+<span class="pb" id="Page_126">126</span>
+the latter place on a prospecting trip in partnership with another luckless
+youngster previously mentioned&mdash;Harry Oakes.</p>
+<p>On a hill overlooking the dry bed of the Amargosa River about
+four miles north of Shoshone, he saw a red outcropping on a hill so
+steep he decided nothing that walked had ever reached the summit, and
+for that reason he might find treasure overlooked.</p>
+<p>Herman, being lean and agile, climbed up to investigate. Oakes
+remained under a bush below. Jones returned with a piece of ore showing
+color. A popular song of the period was called &ldquo;Red Wing&rdquo; and
+because he liked sentimental ballads, Herman named it for the song.
+Camp was made at the bottom of the hill. Oakes assumed the dish washing
+job to offset an extra hour which Herman agreed to give to work on
+the trail. Somebody told Oakes how to bake bread and while Herman
+was wheeling muck to the dump, Harry experimented with his cookery.
+The bread turned out to be excellent and Oakes took the day off to show
+it to friends.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the sort of fellow Harry was,&rdquo; Herman says. &ldquo;You just
+couldn&rsquo;t take him seriously.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Red Wing didn&rsquo;t pay and when abandoned, all they had to
+show for their labor was a stack of bills. On borrowed money, Oakes
+left the country. Herman remained to pay the bills.</p>
+<p class="tb">A few miles east of Shoshone is Chicago Valley, which began in a
+startling swindle, and ended in fame and fortune for one defrauded
+victim.</p>
+<p>A convincing crook from the Windy City found government land
+open to entry and called it Chicago Valley. It was a desolate area and
+the only living thing to be seen was an occasional coyote skulking across
+or a vulture flying over. The promoter needed no capital other than
+a good front, glib tongue, and the ability to lie without the flicker of a
+lash.</p>
+<p>A few weeks later Chicago widows with meager endowments, scrub
+women with savings, and some who coughed too much from long hours
+in sweat shops began to receive beautifully illustrated pamphlets that
+described a tropical Eden with lush fields, cooling lakes, and more to
+the point, riches almost overnight. For $100 anyone concerned would
+be located.</p>
+<p>Soon people began to swing off The Goose, as the dinky train
+serving Shoshone was called, and head for Chicago Valley. Among the
+victims was a widow named Holmes with a family of attractive, intelligent
+children. One of these was a vivacious, beautiful teen-ager named
+Helen.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_127">127</div>
+<p>The Holmes were handicapped because of tuberculosis in the
+family. This in fact had induced the widow to invest her savings.</p>
+<p>Herman Jones used to ride by the Holmes&rsquo; place en route to the
+Pahrump Ranch on hunting trips and owning several burros, he thought
+the Holmes&rsquo; children would like to have one. Taking the donkey over,
+he told Helen, &ldquo;You can use him to work the ranch too. Better and
+faster than a hoe....&rdquo; He brought a harness and a cultivator, showed
+her how to use the implement.</p>
+<p>It was inevitable that investors in Chicago Valley would lose their
+time, labor, and money.</p>
+<p>Thus when Helen Holmes returned the burro to Herman one day,
+Herman was not surprised when she told him she was on her way to
+Los Angeles to look for a job.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what can you do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish I knew. I can get a job washing dishes or waiting on table.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Shortly afterward he heard from her&mdash;just a little note saying she
+was a hello girl on a switchboard. &ldquo;Knew she&rsquo;d land on her feet,&rdquo;
+Herman grinned, and having a bottle handy he gurgled a toast to Helen.
+He had to tell the news of course and with each telling he produced the
+bottle.</p>
+<p>So he was in a pleasant mood when somebody suggested a spot of
+poker. To mention poker in Shoshone is to have a game and in a little
+while Dad Fairbanks, Dan Modine, deputy sheriff, Herman, and two or
+three others were shuffling chips over in the Mesquite Club.</p>
+<p>Herman had the luck and quit with $700. &ldquo;Fellows,&rdquo; he said as he
+folded his money, &ldquo;take a last look at this roll. You won&rsquo;t see it again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;ll be back,&rdquo; Fairbanks said.</p>
+<p>But Herman didn&rsquo;t come back. Instead he went to Los Angeles,
+found Helen at the switchboard. She confided excitedly that she had
+a chance to get into the movies as soon as she could get some nice
+clothes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fine,&rdquo; Herman said. &ldquo;When can I see you?&rdquo; He made a date for
+dinner, had a few more drinks and when he met her he had a comfortable
+binge and a grand idea. &ldquo;... Listen Helen. You wouldn&rsquo;t
+get mad at a fool like me if I meant well, would you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why Herman&mdash;you know I wouldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she laughed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a little likkered and it&rsquo;s kinda personal....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re a gentleman, Herman&mdash;drunk or sober....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been thinking of this picture business. I nicked Dad Fairbanks
+in a poker game. You know how I am. Lose it all one way or another.
+You take it and buy what you need and it&rsquo;ll do us both some good.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_128">128</div>
+<p>The refusal was quick. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s sweet of you Herman, but not that.
+I just couldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can borrow it, can&rsquo;t you ... so I won&rsquo;t drink it up?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The argument won and soon theater goers all over the world were
+clutching their palms as they watched the hair-raising escapes from
+death that pictured &ldquo;The Perils of Pauline&rdquo;&mdash;the serial that made Helen
+Holmes one of the immortals of the silent films. She died at 58, on July
+8, 1950.</p>
+<p>When Charlie Brown became Supervisor in charge of Death Valley
+roads, he wanted a foreman who knew the country. Herman Jones
+had hunted game, treasure, fossils, artifacts of ancient Indians all over
+Death Valley and knew the water courses, the location of subterranean
+ooze, the dry washes which when filled by cloudbursts were a menace.
+Brown made him foreman of the road crew.</p>
+<p>At Shoshone, Herman Jones, grey now, was tinkering with a battered
+Ford when a big Rolls-Royce stopped. He looked around at the
+slam of the door, stared a moment at the man approaching, dropped
+his tools, wiped his hands on a greasy rag. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll be&mdash;&rdquo; he laughed.
+&ldquo;Harry Oakes&mdash;where&rsquo;ve you been all these years?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, knocking around,&rdquo; grinned Oakes. &ldquo;Wanted to see this country
+again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They sat in the shade of a mesquite, talked over Greenwater days
+and the homely memories that leap out of nowhere at such a time.</p>
+<p>Oakes noticed Herman&rsquo;s Ford. Then he pointed to the $20,000
+worth of long, sleek Rolls-Royce. &ldquo;Herman, I&rsquo;m going back to New
+York in a plane. I want to make you a present of that car.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Herman Jones, dumbfounded for a moment, looked at his Ford,
+smiled, and shook his head. &ldquo;Thanks just the same, Harry. That old
+jalopy&rsquo;s plenty good for me.&rdquo; No amount of persuasion could make him
+accept it.</p>
+<p>Knowing that Herman Jones could use any part of $20,000, I marvelled
+that he didn&rsquo;t accept the proffered gift. Then I remembered that
+the Redwing had produced only sweat and debts and Jones had paid
+the debts through the bitter years.</p>
+<p>In the little town of Swastika in the province of Ontario, Canada,
+you will be told that Oakes was booted off the train there because he
+was dead-beating his way. The country had been prospected, pronounced
+worthless and nobody believed there was pay dirt except a
+Chinaman.</p>
+<p>Harry Oakes had an ear for anybody&rsquo;s tale of gold and listened to
+the Chinaman. He was 38 years old. Lady Luck had always slammed
+<span class="pb" id="Page_129">129</span>
+the door in his face but this time, (January, 1912) she flung it open.
+Eleven years later Oakes was rich.</p>
+<p>He had always talked on a grand scale even when broke at Shoshone.
+With a taste for luxury he began to gratify it. He bought a
+palatial home at Niagara Falls and served his guests on gold platters.
+As his fortune increased he gave largely to charities and welfare projects
+such as city parks, playgrounds, hospitals. These gifts lead one
+to believe that the belated payment of $300 borrowed from Dad
+Fairbanks was a calculated delay so that Harry Oakes could enjoy
+the little act he put on at Baker.</p>
+<p>During World War I he gave $500,000 to a London hospital, was
+knighted by King George V in 1939. He became a friend of the Duke
+of Windsor and at his Nassau residence was often the host to the Duke
+and his Duchess, the amazing Wallis Warfield, Baltimore girl who
+went from a boarding house to wed a British king.</p>
+<p>Sir Harry Oakes was murdered in the palatial Nassau home, July
+7, 1943, allegedly by a titled son-in-law who was later acquitted&mdash;a
+verdict denounced by many.</p>
+<p><i>In connection with the story of Helen Holmes told above, it should
+be explained that the original title was &ldquo;Hazards of Helen&rdquo; and following
+an old Hollywood custom, Pathe produced a new version called
+&ldquo;Perils of Pauline.&rdquo; In this the heroine&rsquo;s part was taken by Pearl White.</i></p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_130">130</div>
+<h2 id="c21"><span class="small">Chapter XIX</span>
+<br />Death Valley Scotty</h2>
+<p>A strictly factual thumbnail sketch of Walter Scott would contain
+the following incidents:</p>
+<p>He ran away from his Kentucky home to join his brother, Warner,
+as a cow hand on the ranch of John Sparks&mdash;afterward governor of
+Nevada. He worked as a teamster for Borax Smith at Columbus Marsh.
+He had a similar job at Old Harmony Borax Works.</p>
+<p>In the Nineties he went to work with Buffalo Bill&rsquo;s Wild West
+Show. He married Josephine Millius, a candy clerk on Broadway, New
+York, and brought her to Nevada.</p>
+<p>He became guide, friend, companion, and major domo for Albert
+Johnson&mdash;Chicago millionaire who had come to the desert for his
+health. He did some prospecting in the early part of the century, but
+never found a mine of value.</p>
+<p>America was mining-mad following the Tonopah and Goldfield
+strikes and Scotty went East in search of a grubstake. He obtained one
+from Julian Gerard, Vice President of the Knickerbocker Trust Company
+and a brother of James W. Gerard who had married the daughter
+of Marcus Daly, Montana copper king and who was later U.S. Ambassador
+to Germany.</p>
+<p>Scotty staked a claim near Hidden Spring and named it The Knickerbocker.
+He gave Gerard glowing reports of a mine so rich its location
+must be kept secret.</p>
+<p>Scotty appeared in Los Angeles unheard of, in a ten gallon hat and
+a flaming necktie and with the natural showman&rsquo;s skill, tossed money
+around in lavish tips or into the street for urchins to scramble over.</p>
+<p>This was the well-staged prelude to the charter of the famed Scotty
+Special for a record-breaking run from Los Angeles to Chicago. Though
+Scotty stoutly denies it, he was lifted to fame by a big and talented
+sorrel-headed sports editor and reporter on the Los Angeles Examiner,
+named Charles Van Loan, and John J. Byrnes, passenger agent of the
+Santa Fe railroad. Scotty meant nothing to either of these men, but the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_131">131</span>
+publicity Byrnes saw for the Santa Fe did, and the red necktie, the big
+hat, the scattering of coins, and the secret mine made the sort of story
+Van Loan liked.</p>
+<p>Here Scotty&rsquo;s trail is lost in the fantastic stories of writers, press
+agents, and promoters. Several years afterward when his yarns began
+to backfire, Scotty swore in a Los Angeles court that E. Burt Gaylord,
+a New York man, furnished $10,000 for the Scotty Special&rsquo;s spectacular
+dash across the continent&mdash;the object being to promote the sale of stock
+in the &ldquo;secret mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>More remarkable than any yarn Scotty ever told is the fact that
+although headlines made Scotty, headlines have failed to kill the Scotty
+legend.</p>
+<p>You may toss our heroes into the ash can, but we dust them off and
+put them back. Likable, ingratiating, Scotty will brush aside any attack
+with a funny story and let it go at that.</p>
+<p>In a law suit for an accounting against Scotty, Julian Gerard asserted
+he was to have 22&frac12;% of any treasure Scotty found. Judge Ben Harrison
+decided in Gerard&rsquo;s favor, but the only claim found in Scotty&rsquo;s name
+was the utterly worthless Knickerbocker and Gerard got nothing. The
+claim showed little sign of ever having been worked. A few broken
+rocks. A few holes which could be filled with a shovel within a few
+moments.</p>
+<p>Passing the claim once, I stopped to talk with a native: &ldquo;This is
+the scene of the Battle of Wingate Pass,&rdquo; he told me. &ldquo;In case you
+never heard of it, it was fought for liberty, Scotty&rsquo;s liberty&mdash;that is.
+Gerard got suspicious about Scotty&rsquo;s mine and decided to send his own
+engineers out to investigate. He ordered Scotty to meet them at Barstow
+and show them something or else. It worried Scotty a little, not
+long. He&rsquo;d learned about Indian fighting with Buffalo Bill and met
+the fellows as ordered. When he led them to his wagon waiting behind
+the depot, the Easterners took a look at the wagon, another look at
+Scotty and one at each other. The wagon had boiler plate on the sides,
+rifles stacked army fashion alongside. Outriders with six-guns holstered
+on their belts and Winchesters cradled in their arms.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t let it worry you,&rsquo; Scotty said. &lsquo;Piutes on the warpath. Old
+Dripping Knife, their Chief claims my gold belongs to them. Dry-gulched
+a couple of my best men last week.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Easterners turned white and Scotty gave &rsquo;em another jolt.
+&lsquo;Butchered my boys and fed &rsquo;em to their pigs. But we are fixed for &rsquo;em
+this trip. They sent word they aim to exterminate us. Maybe try it, but
+I&rsquo;ve got lookouts planted all along. Let&rsquo;s go....&rsquo; He shunted them
+aboard, shaking in their knees and headed out of Barstow.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_132">132</div>
+<p>&ldquo;The party had reached that hill you see when suddenly out of the
+brush and the gulches and from behind the rocks came a horde of &lsquo;redskins,&rsquo;
+yelling and shooting. Scotty&rsquo;s men leaped from their saddles and
+the battle was on. The Easterners jumped out of the wagon and hit the
+ground running for the nearest dry wash and that was the closest they
+ever got to Scotty&rsquo;s mine. You&rsquo;ve got to hand it to Scotty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The story made front page from coast to coast and it was several
+days before the hoax was revealed. Unexplained though undenied, was
+the statement that Albert Johnson was in Scotty&rsquo;s party listed as &ldquo;Doctor
+Jones.&rdquo; It is assumed that he had no guilty knowledge of the hoax.</p>
+<p>The most astounding achievement of Scotty&rsquo;s career was attained
+when he interested in an imaginary Death Valley mine, Al Myers, a
+hard-bitten prospector and mining man who had made the discovery
+strike at Goldfield; Rol King, of Los Angeles, bon vivant and manager
+of the popular Hollenbeck Hotel, and Sidney Norman who as mining
+editor of the Los Angeles Times knew mines and mining men.</p>
+<p>These were certainly not the gullible type. But with a yarn of gold,
+Scotty induced them to hazard a trip into Death Valley in mid-summer
+when the temperature was 124 degrees.</p>
+<p>Scotty may have missed the acquisition of a good mine when he
+failed to find one lost by Bob Black. While hunting sheep in the Avawatz
+Range, Bob found some rich float. &ldquo;Honest,&rdquo; Bob said, &ldquo;I knocked
+off the quartz and had pure gold.&rdquo; He tried to locate the ledge but he
+couldn&rsquo;t match his specimen. Later he returned with Scotty, but a cloudburst
+had mauled the country. They found the corners of Bob&rsquo;s tepee, but
+not the ledge. They made several later attempts to find it, but failed.</p>
+<p>Bob always declared that some day he would uncover the ledge and
+might have succeeded if he hadn&rsquo;t met Ash Meadows Jack Longstreet
+one day when both were full of desert likker. Bob passed the lie. Jack
+drew first. Taps for Bob.</p>
+<p class="tb">All kinds of stories have been told to explain Albert Johnson&rsquo;s
+connection with Scotty. The first and the true one is that Johnson, coming
+to the desert for his health, hired Scotty as a guide, liked his yarns
+and his camping craft and kept him around to yank a laugh out of the
+grim solitude.</p>
+<p>But that version didn&rsquo;t appeal to the old burro men. They could
+believe in the hydrophobic skunks or the Black Bottle kept in the
+county hospital to get rid of the old and useless, but not in a Santa
+Claus like Albert Johnson. &ldquo;It just don&rsquo;t make sense&mdash;handing that
+sort of money to a potbellied loafer like Scotty....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Albert Johnson was able to afford any expenditure to make his
+<span class="pb" id="Page_133">133</span>
+life in a difficult country less lonely. He could have searched the world
+over and found no better investment for that purpose than Scotty.</p>
+<p>Genial, resourceful, and never at a loss for a yarn that would fit his
+audience, Scotty was cast in a perfect role. As a matter of fact, whatever
+it cost Johnson for Scotty&rsquo;s flings in Hollywood, or alimony for Scotty&rsquo;s
+wife, it probably came back in the dollar admissions that tourists paid to
+pass the portals of the Castle for a look at Scotty. Of course they seldom
+saw Scotty&mdash;never in later years. Mrs. Johnson was an intensely religious
+woman and didn&rsquo;t like liquor and that disqualified Scotty.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is Scotty&rsquo;s room,&rdquo; the attendant would say. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s his
+bed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, isn&rsquo;t he here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not today. Scotty&rsquo;s a little under the weather. Went over to his
+shack so he wouldn&rsquo;t be disturbed....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Johnson was killed in an auto driven by her husband in
+Towne&rsquo;s Pass when, to avoid going over a precipice, he headed the
+machine into the wall of a cut.</p>
+<p>In 1939 Albert Johnson testified that he first met Scotty in Johnson&rsquo;s
+Chicago office when a wealthy friend appeared with Scotty, who
+was looking for a grubstake. Johnson said he gave Scotty &ldquo;something
+between $1000 and $5000.&rdquo; When the attorney asked him to be more
+definite, Johnson replied that at the time, his income was between
+one-half million and two million dollars a year and the exact amount
+consequently was of no importance then. &ldquo;Since then,&rdquo; Johnson testified,
+&ldquo;I have given him $117,000 in cash and about the same in grubstakes,
+mules, food, and equipment.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They went together into the mountains as Johnson explained, &ldquo;because
+I was all hepped up with his ... claims.&rdquo; Further explaining
+his connection with Scotty, he said: &ldquo;I was crippled in a railroad accident.
+My back was broken. I was paralyzed from the hips down.
+Through the years I got to have a great fondness for him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Albert Johnson, whose fortune came from the National Insurance
+Company, died in 1948, leaving a will that contained no mention of
+Scotty.</p>
+<p>But one laurel none can deny Walter Scott. He did more to put
+Death Valley on the must list of the American tourists than all the
+histories and all the millions spent for books, pamphlets, and radio
+broadcasts.</p>
+<p class="tb">The almost incredible case of Jack and Myra Benson proves that
+P. T. Barnum was not wholly wrong in his dictum regarding the birthrate
+of suckers.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_134">134</div>
+<p>Newly married in Montana they loaded their car and set out to
+seek fortune in the West. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t know anything about gold,&rdquo; Jack
+confided. &ldquo;If anyone had told us to throw a forked stick up a hillside
+and dig where it fell, we would have done it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Near Parker, Arizona, they were having supper in camp when another
+traveler stopped and asked permission to erect his tent nearby.
+Myra invited him to share their supper and during the meal the stranger
+told them he was a chemist and that he had prospected over most of
+the West. He had found a clay that cured meningitis, he said, and this
+had led to fortune. In one town he had found the entire population,
+including doctors and nurses down and out. The clay had cured them
+within a week. Among the cured, was the son of a rich woman who
+had given him $5000.</p>
+<p>Grateful for the fate that had brought this man into their lives, the
+Bensons confided that they had hoped to reach the California gold
+fields, but car trouble had depleted their cash and asked if he knew of
+any place where they could pan gold.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go to Silver Lake, in San Bernardino County, California,&rdquo; he
+advised them, &ldquo;and your troubles will be over. On the edges of the
+lake is a thick mud. Get some tanks and boil it. You&rsquo;ll have a residue
+of gold.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jack and Myra set out over the Colorado Desert; then climbed the
+Providence Mountains to worry through the deep blow sand of the
+Devil&rsquo;s Playground. After three gruelling weeks they reached the lake.
+There they boiled the mud. Then an old prospector became curious
+about their unusual performance. The world slipped out from under
+the Bensons when he told them they were the victims of a liar.</p>
+<p>With $5.00 they headed for Death Valley; found themselves broke
+and gasless at Cave Spring. Jack knocked upon the door of a shack
+he saw there. The woman who opened the door was Jack&rsquo;s former
+school teacher, Mrs. Ira Sweatman, who was keeping house for her
+cousin, Adrian Egbert&mdash;there for his health.</p>
+<p>Those who traveled the Death Valley road by way of Yermo and
+Cave Spring will remember that every five miles tacked to stake or
+bush were signs that read: &ldquo;Water and oil.&rdquo; This was Adrian Egbert&rsquo;s
+fine and practical way of aiding the fellow in trouble.</p>
+<p>Myra and Jack later acquired a claim near Rhodes Spring, a short
+distance from Salsbury Pass road into Death Valley and moved there
+to develop it. I had been away from Shoshone with no contacts and
+returning was surprised to find Myra there. I inquired about Jack.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, haven&rsquo;t you heard?&rdquo; she asked, and from the expression in
+her eyes I knew that Jack was dead.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_135">135</div>
+<p>As best I could, I expressed my condolence, knowing how deeply
+she had loved.</p>
+<p>She said: &ldquo;He went up to the tunnel to set off three blasts. I heard
+only two. He was to come after the third blast. I knew something was
+wrong and went up. Bigod, Mr. Caruthers, Jack&rsquo;s head was blown off
+to hellangone....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Myra&rsquo;s language failed to mask the grief her welling eyes disclosed.</p>
+<p>Only once in her long, helpful life did Myra ever stoop to deception.
+The old age pension law was passed and Myra was entitled to and
+needed its benefits, but Myra wouldn&rsquo;t sign the application. She made
+one excuse after another, but finally Stella Brown got at the bottom of
+her refusal. Myra had been married to Jack for 40 years and just didn&rsquo;t
+want him to find out that she was a year older than he. Mrs. Brown
+at last persuaded her to put aside her vanity.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hell&mdash;&rdquo; Jack grinned when told about it. &ldquo;I knew her age when
+I married her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On cold winter nights Myra could always be found in the Snake
+House where a chair beside the stove was reserved for her. One night
+I said jestingly: &ldquo;You never play poker. What are you doing here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She whispered: &ldquo;Wood&rsquo;s hard to get. I&rsquo;m saving mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then came one of those mornings when one&rsquo;s soul tingles with the
+feel of a perfect desert day and Myra was up early. She came to the
+store.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What got you up at this hour?&rdquo; Bernice asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I felt too dam&rsquo; good to stay indoors....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There were a few old timers in the store and these surrounded her&mdash;because
+she was the kind who could tell you that it was hotter than
+hell, in a thrilling way. She bought a few groceries and started back
+to her cabin. Friendly eyes followed her passage along a path across
+the playground of the little school. Children sliding down the chute
+or riding teeter boards, waved affectionately. Myra was seen to falter
+in her step, then sag to the sand. The children ran to her aid and in
+a moment Shoshone was gathering about her. Myra Benson was dead.</p>
+<p>Sam Flake, nearing 80, on the fringe of the crowd paid his simple
+tribute in a voice a bit shaky, but in language hard as the rock in the
+hills: &ldquo;Dam&rsquo; her old hide&mdash;us boys are going to miss Myra....&rdquo; He
+turned aside, his hand pulling at the bandana in his hip pocket and
+Shoshone understood.</p>
+<p>Though she was buried 500 miles away, every man, woman, and
+child in Shoshone wanted a token of love to attend her and about the
+grave that received her casket was a wilderness of flowers.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_136">136</div>
+<h2 id="c22"><span class="small">Chapter XX</span>
+<br />Odd But Interesting Characters</h2>
+<p>In these pages the reader has seen familiar names&mdash;the favored of
+Lady Luck&mdash;but what of those who failed&mdash;the patient, plodding kind
+of whom you hear only on the scene? They too followed jackasses into
+hidden hills; made trails that led others to fortunes which built cities,
+industries, railroad; endowed colleges and made science function for
+a better world. To these humbler actors we owe more than we can
+repay.</p>
+<p>For nearly half a century John (Cranky) Casey roamed the deserts
+of California and Nevada looking for gold. His luck was consistently
+bad. Grim, tall, erect, with a deep slow voice, he was noted for picturesque
+speech which gained emphasis from an utterly humorless face.
+Congenitally he was an autocrat&mdash;his speech biting.</p>
+<p>A prospector whom Casey didn&rsquo;t like died and friends were discussing
+the disposition of the remains. &ldquo;Chop his feet off,&rdquo; suggested
+Casey, &ldquo;and drive him into the ground with a doublejack....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>From others one could always hear tales of fortunes made or
+missed; of veins of gold wide as a barn door. But no trick of memory
+ever turned Casey&rsquo;s bull quartz into picture rock. &ldquo;Never found enough
+gold to fill a tooth,&rdquo; he would say.</p>
+<p>Casey&rsquo;s leisure hours were spent over books and magazines, chiefly
+highbrow&mdash;particularly books and journals of science.</p>
+<p>A tenderfoot was brought in unconscious from Pahrump Valley. A
+city doctor happened to be passing through and after an examination
+of the victim, turned to the men in overalls and hobnail shoes, who&rsquo;d
+brought him in: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s suffering from a derangement of the hypothalamus.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why in the hell don&rsquo;t you say he had a heat stroke?&rdquo; Casey barked.</p>
+<p>A notorious promoter had a city victim ready for the dotted line.
+<span class="pb" id="Page_137">137</span>
+&ldquo;Double your money in no time.... Samples show $200 to the ton....&rdquo;
+Assuming all prospectors were crooked he called to Casey sitting
+nearby: &ldquo;Casey, you know the Indian Tom claim?&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes, I know it,&rdquo;
+Casey thundered. &ldquo;Not a fleck of gold in the whole dam&rsquo; hill.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the thick silence that followed, the beaten rascal flushed, looked
+belligerently at Casey but Casey&rsquo;s big, hard fists he knew, could almost
+dent boiler plate and the long arms wrapped about a barrel, could
+crush it flat.</p>
+<p>In time Casey acquired an ancient flivver. Only his genius as a
+mechanic kept it going. There were lean years when it bore no license
+and he kept to little-traveled roads. The car, like Casey, was cranky
+and phlegmatic. One day as he was coming into Shoshone it balked
+in the middle of the road, coughed, shivered, and died. Inside the store
+it was 120 degrees. Out on the road where Casey stopped it was probably
+130. For two hours he patiently but vainly tried to coax it back to life.
+Finally he stood aside, wiped the grease from his gnarled hands, calmly
+stoked his pipe and shoved the car from the road. Then he gathered an
+armful of boulders and with a blasting of cussing that shook Shoshone
+he let go with a cannonade of stones that completed its ruin.</p>
+<p>At the age of ten Casey had been taken from the drift of a city&rsquo;s
+backwash and put in an orphanage. Nothing was known of his parentage
+or of relatives. He came to the desert after a colorful career as a conductor
+on the Santa Fe. The late E. W. Harriman, having gained control
+of the Southern Pacific system had his private car attached to a Santa Fe
+train for an inspection tour. At a siding on the Mojave Desert, Harriman
+wanted the train held a few moments. His messenger went to Casey, explaining
+that Harriman was the new boss of the Southern Pacific.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is the Santa Fe,&rdquo; Casey bristled, looking at his watch. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+due in Barstow at 11:05 and bigod I&rsquo;ll be there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Aboard his train he was a despot and a stickler for the rules, demanding
+that even his superiors obey them. This finally was his downfall
+and he came to the desert.</p>
+<p>Elinor Glyn, who made the best seller list with &ldquo;Three Weeks&rdquo; in
+the early part of the century, came to Rawhide and Tex Rickard,
+spectacular gambler undertook to show her a bit of life a la Rawhide.
+He took her to the Stingaree district and later to a reception in his
+own place. The state&rsquo;s notables were presented to the lady along with
+Nat Goodwin, Julian Hawthorne, and others internationally known.</p>
+<p>Tex saw Casey standing alone at the end of the bar and knowing
+he was a voracious reader he went to Casey: &ldquo;Come on and meet the
+author of Three Weeks....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve read it,&rdquo; Casey said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve hung folks for less.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_138">138</div>
+<p>Casey&rsquo;s method of getting a job when his grub ran out was unique
+and unfailing. He would storm into the store and turn loose on Charlie,
+in charge of the roads and long his friend. &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s keeping up these
+roads? Chuck holes in &rsquo;em big as the Grand Canyon ... disgrace&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Been waiting for you to come in,&rdquo; Charlie would say with a sober
+face. &ldquo;Get a shovel and fix &rsquo;em.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A good conscientious worker, Casey would put the road in shape,
+pay his debts and again head into the horizon.</p>
+<p>You who spin through Death Valley or along its approaches owe
+much to Casey, who made many of the original road beds the hard way&mdash;with
+pick and shovel.</p>
+<p>At last Casey got the old age pension and his latter years were the
+best. His home, a dugout in the bank of a wash near Tecopa. With no
+rent, with books and magazines and the solitude he loved, he lived
+happily. &ldquo;When I croak,&rdquo; he often said, &ldquo;just put me in my dugout.
+Toss a stick of dynamite in after me. Shut the door and cave in the
+goddam&rsquo; hill.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>One night he went to Tecopa. Friends were doing a spot of drinking
+and far behind in his score with the years, Casey joined them. There
+was nothing out of line. Just yarns and memories and Casey had a lot
+of these. Tonopah. Goldfield. Rawhide. Ely. Foundling days.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;... They put me in a religious school. Had no relatives. In those
+days they whaled hell outa you just to see you squirm. &lsquo;Casey,&rsquo; the
+teacher would ask, &lsquo;who swallowed the whale?&rsquo; How did I know? Then
+he&rsquo;d drag me off by the ear and blister my bottom. I shoved off one
+night. Been on the loose ever since.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As he drank from his bottle of beer he suddenly slumped&mdash;and died
+instantly. Because of the intense heat, Maury Sorrells, now Supervisor
+but then Coroner, ordered immediate burial.</p>
+<p>Someone recalled Casey&rsquo;s wish to be put in the dugout and the hill
+blown up and started for the dynamite. But Whitey Bill McGarn warned
+that it would violate the law. One-eyed Casey&mdash;no relation, but long a
+friend, suggested a wake until the grave was dug. &ldquo;It will be daylight
+then and we&rsquo;ll plant him in the wash right in front of his dugout.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This was done as the sun came over the hills and I like to think that
+somewhere in the after life, all is well with Casey.</p>
+<p class="tb">Ben Brandt, previously mentioned, was a big blond man with child-like
+blue eyes, huge gnarled hands and the strength of an ox. He wore
+enormous boots, but when he bought new ones he always complained
+that they lacked traction and would go immediately to the dump, salvage
+an old tire casing and add two inches of reinforcement to the soles,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_139">139</span>
+with half a pound of hobnails. Ben then was ready for travel&mdash;provided
+he could find his burros.</p>
+<p>Near remote Quail Springs Ben dug a 4&times;4 mine shaft 75 feet deep,
+without aid. Descending by ladder he would fill a 10 gallon bucket with
+dirt, climb out and bring it to the surface. Day after day, month after
+month Ben applied the power of two strong arms and two strong legs.
+&ldquo;With an engine you could do it in half the time,&rdquo; Ben was told.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got plenty of time,&rdquo; Ben drawled.</p>
+<p>Ben disdained gold in quartz formation. &ldquo;I like placer. It&rsquo;s a poor
+man&rsquo;s game. If you find gold you put it in your poke and you&rsquo;ve got
+spending money.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ben kept five burros and being industrious, never lacked a grubstake.
+He avoided argument except upon one subject, and that was
+burros versus Fords in prospecting. &ldquo;I can get anywhere with my burros.
+I find stalled flivvers all over the desert and my burros drag &rsquo;em in.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ben believed that a burro had at least some of the intellectual powers
+of man. &ldquo;Read a clock good as you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I worked my burro,
+Solomon, on a hoist. He didn&rsquo;t like it. I got up every morning at daylight,
+by an alarm clock. Slept out and kept the clock on a boulder at my
+head and got up when the alarm went off. One morning I woke up with
+the sun shining straight down in my eyes. It was noon. That burro had
+sneaked up and taken that clock down the canyon a mile away. Don&rsquo;t
+tell me they can&rsquo;t think! I sold him. Too smart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I asked Ben once what he would do if he suddenly found a million
+dollar claim. &ldquo;I would build a monument a thousand feet high on top
+of Telescope Peak and dedicate it to burros.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such a monument would inadequately express the debt today&rsquo;s
+world owes that little beast. Here are some of the things that link your
+life to the burro:</p>
+<p>The springs and the mattress in the bed you were born on. The talc
+that powdered you. The soap that bathed you. The ring you slipped on
+the finger of the girl you love. The paint on your house. The glass in
+your windows. The tile in your bathroom. The enamel ware in your
+kitchen. The prescription your druggist fills. The fillings the dentist puts
+into your teeth. The coin and the currency you spend. The auto you ride
+in and finally the casket in which you leave this world.</p>
+<p>Wars have been won or lost and the credit of nations stabilized because
+a burro carried a prospector&rsquo;s grub into faraway hills.</p>
+<p>Ben&rsquo;s burros strayed and he&rsquo;d just returned with them after a two
+days&rsquo; hunt. He was sitting on the bench mopping his brow when
+Louise Grantham, the girl with the mine in the Panamint, came up.
+She needed pack animals to get the ore down to the road. She&rsquo;d tried
+<span class="pb" id="Page_140">140</span>
+before, to trade her Ford pickup for Ben&rsquo;s burros, but he&rsquo;d never shown
+a flicker of interest. In a voice pitched for Ben&rsquo;s ears, she said to Ernie
+Huhn: &ldquo;If Ben didn&rsquo;t waste so much time hunting those jacks, he might
+find a mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ben cocked an ear, but made no comment.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now take that Quail Springs hole,&rdquo; Louise went on. &ldquo;If he had my
+pickup he could take off a wheel, put on a belt and haul up the muck in
+one tenth the time, and instead of hoofing it in the sun he could ride in
+a cool cab and haul his supplies in.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There comes a weak moment in everyone&rsquo;s life and this was Ben&rsquo;s.
+He traded the burros for the Ford and one of the best prospectors on
+the desert was ruined forever.</p>
+<p>Ben had a mortal fear of women and nothing could convince him
+that any unattached woman wasn&rsquo;t always lying in wait for any loose
+man.</p>
+<p>Ben went into the Johnnie country to prospect and passing through
+I looked him up. He was living in a tin shack in the canyon leading to
+the old Johnnie Mine. I asked Ben about his luck.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Last prospecting I did was right out there.&rdquo; He pointed to the
+slope in front of his house. &ldquo;Good placer ground too.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why did you quit?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Woman,&rdquo; Ben grumbled. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know yet what come over me,
+but I took a woman for a partner.&rdquo; He pointed to a boulder a few
+hundred yards away. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s where I wanted to start digging. It&rsquo;s rich
+dirt. She wanted to start up there near her shack.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what difference did it make?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I see you don&rsquo;t know women. I hadn&rsquo;t been working up there by
+her house no time before she called me to get her a bucket of water.
+Bucket was half full. Next day she wanted a board in the kitchen floor
+nailed down. Didn&rsquo;t need any nail. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s some fresh apple pie on
+the table,&rsquo; she says. I told her I didn&rsquo;t like pie. I&rsquo;m crazy about pie but
+I knew her game. She calculated if I ate with her two&mdash;three times I&rsquo;d
+be a dead pigeon. So I told her she could have the claim and walked off.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ben struck a happier note when he informed me that he didn&rsquo;t need
+to work any more and at last had attained the one ambition of his life.
+&ldquo;Come inside and I&rsquo;ll show you.&rdquo; Beaming as only a man can when he
+sits on top of the world, he approached a table and it flashed over me
+that I would see a certified check for a fortune.</p>
+<p>There was a cloth over the table and he carefully wiped his big
+hands before touching it. He wet his big, broad thumb and forefinger
+and gave them an extra wipe on the sides of his shirt, a wide smile on
+his face and I had a vicarious thrill that a man who could barely read
+<span class="pb" id="Page_141">141</span>
+and write had at last achieved that which he most wanted in life. He
+started to remove the cloth, but paused. &ldquo;Always said if I ever struck
+it rich, first money I spent would be for one of these dinkuses.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He flipped the cloth aside. I stared incredulous. It was a portable
+typewriter.</p>
+<p>He replaced the cover with the gentle care of a mother putting her
+baby to bed and I left him, sure that God was in his heaven with an eye
+on Ben.</p>
+<p class="tb">Contemporary with Ben was Joe Volmer, who lived in a dugout in
+Dublin Gulch. I had seen royalty from afar and once I had dined with a
+sultan on horsemeat and fried bananas, but no king ever attained the
+majesty of Joe. He was tall, erect, wore a white sailor&rsquo;s hat and carried a
+cane. His mustache was always waxed to a needle point, after the manner
+of Kaiser Wilhelm. Though he increased his small pension by selling
+home brew, he always managed to give the impression that he was descending
+to your level when he accepted the two bits you left on his
+table.</p>
+<p>He was neat as he was lordly and forever scrubbing his pots and
+pans. He kept the dugout immaculate and when I first saw him standing
+on the ledge in front of his door, calmly surveying the valley below, he
+posed like an Alexander the Great, with the world conquered and trussed
+at his feet.</p>
+<p>I had never seen him until one day a tourist came into the store and
+asked Charlie for a stop-watch. Charlie told him he didn&rsquo;t carry stop-watches.
+Shortly after the tourist had gone, Joe came in for a stop-watch.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t keep &rsquo;em,&rdquo; Charlie said. &ldquo;Helluva store,&rdquo; Joe barked and strode
+out.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A curious coincidence,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Two calls for a stop-watch in the
+same day away out here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no coincidence,&rdquo; Charlie said. &ldquo;Just Joe Volmer. He&rsquo;s in every
+day asking for something he knows I haven&rsquo;t got.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After Joe left, Jack Crowley came for his mail. Brown was in the
+cage set apart for the post office. He had just received several sheets of
+six-cent stamps&mdash;twice as many as he needed. &ldquo;Jack,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when you
+see Joe tell him I&rsquo;m out of six-cent stamps.&rdquo; Within an hour Joe shoved
+a five dollar bill through the window. &ldquo;Give me five dollars&rsquo; worth of
+six-cent stamps,&rdquo; he ordered. Brown picked up the bill, filled the order
+and never again did Joe ask for merchandise not in stock.</p>
+<p>Joe sold a claim and decided he needed a refrigerator to keep the
+beer cold. So he picked up a Monkey Ward catalogue and ordered a
+big white enamel number large enough for a hotel. Joe thought a
+<span class="pb" id="Page_142">142</span>
+refrigerator was just a refrigerator and he strutted around telling everybody.
+He had to widen the dugout door and waiting customers were
+more than eager to help him get the machine in place. He loaded the
+shelves and told them to come back in a couple of hours and cool their
+innards.</p>
+<p>They came with their tongues hanging out. Joe set out the glasses
+and passed the bottles. Herman Jones picked one up and shook it. The
+cork hit the ceiling. &ldquo;Hotter&rsquo;n hell,&rdquo; Herman said. &ldquo;What sort of cooler
+is that?&rdquo; He went over and looked. &ldquo;Gas. You dam&rsquo; fool. Nearest gas is
+Barstow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Until Joe&rsquo;s death he used the refrigerator to store pots and pans.</p>
+<p>Discovered in his dugout in a serious condition, Joe was rushed to
+Death Valley Junction 28 miles away, where the Pacific Coast Borax
+Company maintained a hospital which was in charge of Dr. Shrum, who
+was rather realistic and somewhat cold blooded.</p>
+<p>Just as they had gotten Joe in the doctor&rsquo;s office, another patient was
+brought in. Dr. Shrum looked at the new comer and then at Joe. &ldquo;Take
+Joe out,&rdquo; he ordered. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s going to die anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Joe was wheeled outside and a moment later was dead.</p>
+<p class="tb">George Williams, a Spanish American war veteran, retired to Shoshone
+on a pension of $50. Since food was cheap, George had more
+money than he knew what to do with. He kept five burros. He never
+prospected, but roamed the country and thought nothing of taking a
+300 mile trip across the roughest terrain in the region. After spending
+his summers in the high country, he would return to Shoshone in winter.
+There he had a five acre ranch fenced in and a neat cabin.</p>
+<p>Every day George would come to the store and buy a pound of
+chocolates. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a sweet tooth,&rdquo; he would explain.</p>
+<p>Charlie, sure that no one could eat as much chocolate as George
+bought, was a bit curious as to what George did with it and trailed
+him one day through the mesquite to find George feeding the candy
+to his burros.</p>
+<p>George was not a drinker, but on one occasion he joined a party
+and went on a bender. He awoke next morning with a horrible hangover
+and was so humiliated that he left Shoshone and never returned. He
+went over to Sandy and died in the &rsquo;30s.</p>
+<p>One day George started to tell me a story as we sat on the bench. His
+burros were grazing in the nearby salt grass. Every time he reached the
+climax of his yarn, he would jump up to go after a straying burro. When
+he retrieved that one, another would wander off and George would
+leave me again.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_143">143</div>
+<p>For one entire summer I listened to the beginning of that yarn and
+every morning would remind him of it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where was I?&rdquo; he&rsquo;d say. &ldquo;Oh, yes, I was telling you about the girl
+climbing out of the fellow&rsquo;s window just before daylight. Well, she
+went&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then George would jump up and start for a burro, and I never
+learned what happened to the torrid romance after the girl crawled out
+of her lover&rsquo;s window.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_144">144</div>
+<h2 id="c23"><span class="small">Chapter XXI</span>
+<br />Roads. Cracker Box Signs</h2>
+<p>Any resemblance that a Death Valley highway bore to a road was
+a coincidence prior to 1926, and few tourists traveled over them unless
+two cars were along. &ldquo;Just follow the wheel tracks and keep your eyes
+peeled for the cracker box signs along the road,&rdquo; was the usual advice to
+the novice who didn&rsquo;t know that tracks left by Mormons&rsquo; wagons
+nearly a century before may be seen today.</p>
+<p>One of these led me to the bank of a mile-wide gash made by cloudbursts.
+To locate the missing link I climbed the nearest mountain and
+on a lonely mesa came at last upon a piece of shook nailed to a stake
+and stuck into the ground. But it had nothing to do with roads. A crude
+inscription read:</p>
+<dl class="undent"><dd>Montana Jim</dd>
+<dd>July 1888</dd>
+<dd>A dam good pal</dd></dl>
+<p>Reverently I stepped aside. Never again would I see a finer tribute
+to man. A few rocks bleached white in the sun outlined a sunken grave.
+Crossed upon it were Jim&rsquo;s pick and shovel. It was not difficult to recreate
+what had happened there. Jim and his friend looking for gold.
+Jim&rsquo;s faltering and the sun beating him down. Jim&rsquo;s partner knowing
+that Jim&rsquo;s moniker would identify him better than a surname to anyone
+who passed that way interested in Jim. Out in the desert 100 miles
+from human habitation he couldn&rsquo;t call an undertaker, so he dug a
+hole, wrapped Jim in his canvas, rolled him in and hoped that God
+would reach down for Jim.</p>
+<p>At that period it was not an uncommon experience for the early
+tourist to lose his way by doing the natural thing at a crossroads and take
+the one which showed the sign of most travel. Often he would find later
+<span class="pb" id="Page_145">145</span>
+that he had followed a trail to a mine miles away. Often too, it led to
+disaster.</p>
+<p class="tb">The story of roads begins at Shoshone with Brown. In his trips in
+and around the valley, he erected signs to prevent the traveler from
+losing his way and his life. &ldquo;I would like to see Death Valley country,&rdquo;
+people would say to him, &ldquo;but everyone tells me to stay out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Inyo county had little revenue and that was used in the more populous
+Owens Valley 150 miles west. The east side (the Shoshone area)
+was totally neglected. Letters and petitions protesting the unfair distribution
+of county funds were tossed into the waste basket. &ldquo;Roads in
+that cauldron? Who would use &rsquo;em? Nobody ever goes there but a few
+old prospectors.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This was true but it was also true that on Owens Valley&rsquo;s west side
+the lakes and forests of the High Sierras were attracting a paying crop
+of vacationists and the supervisors knew it would be political suicide to
+divert this traffic from its towns and resorts. The county-wide opinion as
+to chance for relief was expressed in the slang of the day by a loafer on
+the bench at Shoshone: &ldquo;About as much as a wax mouse would have
+against an asbestos cat in a race through hell. They have the votes and
+elect the supervisors.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The east side had never had a member on the board. In the Shoshone
+precinct were less than 40 voters. In Death Valley a few prospectors
+who would have battered down the gates of hell if they thought
+gold lay beyond, poked around in its canyons. A few Indians. A few
+workmen for the Borax Company. In 1924 Brown put his suitcase in his
+car, filled the tank and said to those about: &ldquo;Fellows, I&rsquo;m running for
+Supervisor.&rdquo; &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be the mouse,&rdquo; quipped a friend.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll let &rsquo;em know somebody lives over here anyway....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Skirting the urban strongholds of the gentlemen in office Brown
+knocked at every door in the district. He berated none nor claimed he
+had all the answers to an obviously difficult problem. &ldquo;... Roads
+built there will lead here. Everybody will gain....&rdquo; Then to the next
+cabin and the next canyon until he&rsquo;d seen every voter.</p>
+<p>Before the opposition knew he had been around, he was back in
+Shoshone selling bacon and beans.</p>
+<p>When the votes were counted the overlords of the west side gasped.
+&ldquo;Who the hell&rsquo;s this Brown? Didn&rsquo;t even know he was running....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Taking office January 1, 1925, he found that the beaten incumbent
+had spent all the money allocated for road maintenance in his own
+bailiwick before retiring. Nevertheless, Brown convinced the new board
+his election proved that the people of the entire county agreed with him
+<span class="pb" id="Page_146">146</span>
+that the Death Valley area could no longer be neglected and managed
+to get a niggardly appropriation which would not have built a mile of
+decent mountain road, and his district had three challenging mountain
+ranges to cross.</p>
+<p>With this appropriation he was expected to care for a mileage four
+times greater than that of the west side and was thus responsible for
+not only eastern approaches but maintenance of 150 miles of road from
+Darwin, all roads in the valley and those which furnished the north and
+south approaches. He managed to get $5000 after two years. With this
+he procured road machinery on a rental basis and succeeded in making
+a fair desert road. Then he began a one-man crusade to exploit Death
+Valley as a tourist attraction. &ldquo;We need only roads a tourist can travel.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He worked just as diligently for all of Inyo&rsquo;s roads. &ldquo;We have one
+of the world&rsquo;s best vacation lands,&rdquo; he told the west-siders. &ldquo;You have
+an abundance of beautiful lakes and streams in a setting of mountains
+impressive as any in the world. On our side we offer the appeal of the
+Panamint, the Funeral Range, and spectacular Death Valley. Tourists
+will come to both of us if we give them a chance and they will be our
+best crop.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By 1926 his crusade for roads had spread beyond Inyo county lines.
+San Bernardino county, through which passes Highway 66, a main
+transcontinental artery, joins Inyo on the south. Its board of supervisors
+was in session one day when Brown strode in. Most of them he knew.
+He wanted their advice, he told them. &ldquo;Your county and mine need more
+roads to bring more people. The easiest way into Death Valley is through
+your county from Baker. The distance from Baker to the Inyo county
+line is 45 miles. If you will build the road to the Inyo line, I will build
+it from that point to Furnace Creek, 71 miles. Such a road would open
+Death Valley to the public and the tourists who will travel will spend
+enough money in your towns to pay your share of the cost.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>San Bernardino supervisors agreed to consider it but were not enthusiastic.
+One of America&rsquo;s largest counties, San Bernardino had also
+one of its largest road problems.</p>
+<p>Brown kept plugging, arranging meetings, convincing residents that
+the county&rsquo;s portion of the road would be over flat country and over
+roads already passable, and its construction inexpensive.</p>
+<p>Finally San Bernardino county supervisors agreed and by April,
+1929, he had 71 miles of passable road. The result was that Death
+Valley was no longer remote as the Congo and tourists began to come.</p>
+<p>To Shoshone it meant a few more windshields to wipe; a few more
+cars to crawl under. Another soft answer to frame for the sightseer
+<span class="pb" id="Page_147">147</span>
+cursing the desolation. Another shed for the store that started on the
+kitchen table.</p>
+<p>In 1932 Brown went before the State Highway Commission and
+urged that all the roads he had built in Death Valley be taken over by
+the state. The law was passed.</p>
+<p>Death Valley became a National Monument February 11, 1933, by
+order of President Franklin Roosevelt. At that time America was groping
+its way through depression, worrying about its dinner and its debts
+as a result of the stock market crash of 1929.</p>
+<p>In the nation&rsquo;s hobo jungles the seasoned &ldquo;bindle stiff&rdquo; made room
+for the newcomer who had always lived on the right side of the tracks.
+Freight trains carried a new kind of bum when the adolescent female
+crawled into a car alongside an adolescent male, vainly seeking work
+anywhere at anything.</p>
+<p>To save them and others like them C.C.C. camps were organized
+and one of these recruited largely from New York City&rsquo;s Bowery, was
+sent to Death Valley with headquarters at Cow Creek, a few miles north
+of Furnace Creek Inn.</p>
+<p>The new park was under the supervision of Col. John R. White,
+later superintendent of the entire National Park System and to Ray
+Goodwin, assistant superintendent was assigned the task of building
+additional roads and trails to points of interest to connect with the State
+System which Brown had built.</p>
+<p>Then began in earnest the flow of tourist traffic to the &ldquo;God-forsaken
+hole&rdquo; for which Brown had worked for 14 long and difficult
+years. But he soon found that to the problems of a small desert community
+he had added those of a whole county. They were the aftermath
+of what has since been called in a marvelous understatement by Morrow
+Mayo, historian of Los Angeles, &ldquo;The Rape of Owens Valley.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the early part of the century, the city of Los Angeles had secretly
+acquired nearly all sources of water in Inyo and Mono counties. An
+amazed world applauded the engineering feat by which water was
+siphoned over mountain ranges to flow through ditches and tunnels, a
+distance of 259 miles.</p>
+<p>The enterprise was announced by its promoters as the answer to
+the desperate need for water. It is now known that this need was only
+a mask to hide a scheme to make Los Angeles pay the cost of bringing
+water to 108,000 acres of waterless land in San Fernando valley so
+that the owners could make a profit of a hundred million dollars through
+its subdivision and sale. This they did.</p>
+<p>The shameful story glorifies by comparison the cattle wars of the
+early West when one side hired its Billy the Kids to kill off the other&mdash;the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_148">148</span>
+only difference being that in the Owens Valley feud the Billy the
+Kids were the Big Names of Los Angeles who used unscrupulous
+politicians and laws cunningly passed instead of six-guns.</p>
+<p>As a consequence, Los Angeles owns the towns, ranches, and cattle
+ranges so that merchants, householders, ranchers, and renters have no
+title except in a relatively few instances, to the land upon which they
+live or to the house or store they occupy. Los Angeles could sell or lease
+or refuse to sell or lease land to cattlemen, homes to residents or stores
+to merchants and sell or refuse to sell water to those who had lived all
+their lives and would die on the devastated land.</p>
+<p>As a result, the relations between the city and the Displaced Persons
+of the two counties were those of victor and vanquished.</p>
+<p>In 1935 the city succeeded in getting an act passed by the legislature
+which prevented any town from becoming incorporated without the
+consent of 60 per cent of the property owners. The purpose of the act
+seemed fair enough when it was announced that it was designed to save
+the towns from both political demagogues and crackpots running amuck
+in California and it became a law.</p>
+<p>But there was more than the eye could see. Its real object had been
+to strengthen the strangle hold of the Los Angeles Water and Power
+board upon Owens Valley. Since it owned the towns it could now prevent
+their incorporation. There had been some feeling of security under
+a resolution of the Water and Power Board which had declared that
+merchants, cattlemen, and residents&mdash;all of them lessees, would be given
+preference in new leases and renewals of old ones.</p>
+<p>In 1942 the resolution became a scrap of paper, and ranchers, cattle
+men and householders were advised that their leases would hereafter
+be renewed by a method of secret bidding.</p>
+<p>Thus the residents of Owens Valley learned that the labor of years
+had brought no security. As one beaten old timer told me, &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been
+kicked around so much I&rsquo;m used to it. I helped blow those ditches two-three
+times, to turn that water loose on the desert. I know when I&rsquo;m
+licked.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Resentment in Mono county, which provided more of the water
+taken by Los Angeles than Inyo, was even more aroused and smoldering
+hatreds were ready again to blow up a ditch. The two counties constitute
+the 28th Senatorial district.</p>
+<p>Brown&rsquo;s success in the Assembly had not gone unnoticed in the
+neighboring county of Mono. &ldquo;We need that fellow Brown,&rdquo; a prominent
+citizen said, and others repeated it.</p>
+<p>Again Charlie put his suitcase in his car, filled the tank. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve
+<span class="pb" id="Page_149">149</span>
+never had anybody from this side at Sacramento,&rdquo; he told a friend
+standing by. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m running for the Senate.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Know anybody up there?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going and get acquainted,&rdquo; he said and headed across the valley.</p>
+<p>Most of Mono county is isolated by the High Sierras. Again the
+door to door technique. No torches. No brass bands. Just the old eye-to-eye-talk-it-over
+system. As always he let the voter do the talking and he
+listened, but when he slid into his car the voter was ready to tell his
+neighbor: &ldquo;I like that fellow. Doesn&rsquo;t claim to know it all.&rdquo; He told his
+banker, his grocer, his butcher, baker, and barber.</p>
+<p>Result? I was in the Senate Chamber at Sacramento later, when I
+heard one of a group of men huddled nearby say, &ldquo;This is an important
+bill that concerns everybody on the east side of the Sierras. We&rsquo;d better
+see Charlie.&rdquo; I nudged the man reading a document at my side. &ldquo;Those
+fellows want to see you, Senator.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He had received the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican
+parties and had secured the passage of an act which denies
+a municipality holding more than 50 per cent of the property of another
+subdivision of the state, proprietary power over the security and stability
+of such subdivision. Moreover he was on the all-powerful Rules Committee,
+the Fish and Game, Local Government, Natural Resources, Social
+Welfare, and Election Committees, friend and frequent adviser of Governor
+Warren.</p>
+<p>Honeymooning Secretary Ickes was combining business with pleasure
+when he reached California and wanting to see how his Park System
+was functioning, he took his bride to see Death Valley. Besides, he had
+some plans affecting the Inyo area.</p>
+<p>The fight was having tough sledding in the legislature despite President
+Roosevelt&rsquo;s approval. Then he talked to people less biased. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d
+better see Charlie....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who the hell&rsquo;s Charlie?&rdquo; asked Harold.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Senator from Death Valley....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With Ray Goodwin, Superintendent of the Death Valley Monument
+to guide him, he was taken to all the show places. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Mr. Ickes,
+&ldquo;I want to see Brown.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At Shoshone Charlie&rsquo;s toggery is strictly for work which includes
+tending the gas pump, stove repairing, plumbing, and what-have-you.
+He was flat on his back under the dripping oil of a balky car when Mr.
+Goodwin stepped from the limousine.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Charlie,&rdquo; Mr. Goodwin called, &ldquo;Mr. Ickes is here to see you.&rdquo; Receiving
+no answer, he walked over to the car and added that Mr. Ickes
+<span class="pb" id="Page_150">150</span>
+was in a hurry. Still, no answer. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s Secretary Ickes, Department of the
+Interior. This is important.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So&rsquo;s this,&rdquo; Brown grunted. When he&rsquo;d finished, he crawled out and
+wiping the grime from his hands, joined Goodwin at the waiting car.
+After being introduced to the bride and the self-styled &ldquo;Old Curmudgeon&rdquo;
+the latter explained his plan to add certain lands in Charlie&rsquo;s
+district, to the Forest Reserve. &ldquo;... You&rsquo;re opposing me. You&rsquo;re a
+Democrat, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I came from Georgia,&rdquo; Charlie drawled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re for Roosevelt, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Within reason,&rdquo; Charlie answered.</p>
+<p>Then Mr. Ickes, with the assurance of the perfectionist began to sell
+his idea.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know of any reason why the area designated as Forest
+Reserve should not be protected as any other of our natural resources?&rdquo;
+he concluded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just one,&rdquo; Charlie said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; Ickes snapped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your forest is nearly all brush land without a tree on it big enough
+to shade a lizard.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Charlie was similarly dressed when a well tailored and impatient
+tourist with a carload of friends whom he was evidently trying to impress,
+drove up for gas.</p>
+<p>Always unhurried, Charlie came to the pumps, slowly reached for
+the hose and as lazily checked the oil.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Say, fellow&mdash;&rdquo; the tourist barked. &ldquo;Senator Brown is a friend of
+mine. Get a move on or you&rsquo;ll be looking for a job.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Without the flicker of an eyelid, Charlie quickened, jumped for a
+cleaning rag and briskly polished the windshield. When he brought the
+tourist&rsquo;s change he apologized for his slowness and begged him not to
+report it to Senator Brown. &ldquo;Jobs are hard to get and I have a wife and
+ten children to support.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Touched with remorse, the tourist looked at the change. &ldquo;Just give
+it to the kids and forget it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>When the Pacific Coast Borax Company built its swanky Furnace
+Creek Inn on the western slope of the Funeral Range overlooking
+Death Valley, it began to look about for places that would give the
+most spectacular and comprehensive view of the Big Sink as a means of
+entertaining guests, and far enough away to keep them from boredom.</p>
+<p>All the old timers who had wandered over the ranges were called in.
+Each suggested the place that had impressed him more than others. Each
+of these places was visited and after weeks of deliberation a spot on
+<span class="pb" id="Page_151">151</span>
+Chloride Cliff toward the northern end of Death Valley was chosen and
+the bigwigs started back to Los Angeles.</p>
+<p>When they stopped at Shoshone for gas and water, Clarence Rasor,
+an engineer of the company was still thinking of the chosen site and
+asked Brown, long his friend, if he knew of any view of the valley better
+than the one at Chloride Cliff.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t pay much attention to scenery,&rdquo; he told Rasor. &ldquo;To me it&rsquo;s
+all just desert or mountain. But I know one view that made me stop and
+look. Kinda got me. The chances are most folks would rave over it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Could you find it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure could....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Rasor called the others, repeated Charlie&rsquo;s story and added: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re
+in a hurry, but knowing Charlie as I do, I believe we&rsquo;d better turn
+around and go back if he&rsquo;ll guide us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Charlie agreed. It was a long, tortuous climb, even to the base of
+the peak. There Charlie went ahead and then beckoned them. Holding
+to bushes they walked or crawled to stand beside him; took one look
+and caught their breath. A mile below them lay the awesome Sink.
+White salt beds spread like a shroud over its silent desolation. Billowed
+dunes, gold against the dark of lava rock. Here a pastelled hill. There
+a brooding canyon. Beyond, the colorful Panamint under the golden
+glow of the sun.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This is the place,&rdquo; they said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;... You can tell &rsquo;em too,&rdquo; said Charlie pointing, &ldquo;that right
+down there is Copper Canyon. If such stuff interests them, they can see
+the footprints of the camels and elephants and a lot of historic junk like
+that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So you who thrill at Dante&rsquo;s View may thank Charles Brown of
+Shoshone.</p>
+<p>When first elected to the senate, his colleagues were quick to see the
+qualities that had appealed to voters when they elected him supervisor.
+He had frequently been before that body in his fight for roads and tax
+reforms. They knew too that better schools for all rural areas either
+wholly or largely were the result of his efforts, and soon he was on the
+Rules Committee&mdash;a place usually assigned to those who come from the
+more populous districts of the state, because its five members through its
+power to appoint all standing and special committees, largely decide
+what legislation reaches the governor.</p>
+<p>In 1950 Brown announced his candidacy for reelection under the
+state law that enables a candidate to seek the nomination of two parties.</p>
+<p>The slot machine had been outlawed in California by the previous
+legislature and Brown had been largely instrumental in securing the
+<span class="pb" id="Page_152">152</span>
+passage of the law. Since the slot machine is a three billion dollar
+business in the nation, the gamblers opposed him as part of a general
+plan to secure repeal of the law and reinstate the one-arm bandits.</p>
+<p>Since Mono county adjoins Nevada, gambling interests of that state
+contributed without stint, to retire Brown to private life. He had been in
+office for 25 years and opposed by this powerful group, guided by both
+brains and cunning, the odds apparently were against him. While the
+opposition boasted that he was through, Brown was calling at cabins in
+the hills and gulches, meeting friends on busy village streets and again
+when the vote was counted, it was discovered that voters have memories.
+He had won the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican
+parties by almost two to one and under the law, was re-elected.</p>
+<p>Due to his priority standing and the retirement of older senators,
+the big fellow who walked 150 miles to get a job at Greenwater in
+order to save the fare to eat on, automatically shares with two men the
+power to control the legislation of the state.</p>
+<p class="tb">Hell, like gold, is where you find it&mdash;either in people or places. A
+lady of wealth and aristocratic background in route to Furnace Creek&rsquo;s
+luxury inn, stopped at Shoshone for gas. Worn out by the long drive
+over the corduroy road, she looked about her and then at Charlie in
+greasy overalls. &ldquo;How on earth,&rdquo; she asked in genuine distress, &ldquo;do you
+make a living in this God-forsaken-hole?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; Charlie said gloomily. &ldquo;But we get a few pennies
+from tourists, a little flour from mesquite beans, and stay alive one way
+or another, hoping to get out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The gracious lady opened her purse, thrust a five dollar bill into
+Charlie&rsquo;s hand and went her way.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It really made her happy,&rdquo; Charlie chuckled, &ldquo;and I just didn&rsquo;t have
+the heart to give it back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>What is it that man wants of these &ldquo;God-forsaken-holes&rdquo; on the
+desert? I sought the answer one day when Shoshone was having a holiday.
+George Ishmael, as native as an Indian, was chosen to barbecue the
+steer. A well-to-do tourist begged the job of digging the big pit. &ldquo;Want
+to flex my muscles....&rdquo; Another cut the wood. At a depth of four
+feet, water was struck and rose a foot over the bottom. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right&rdquo;
+George said. He tossed a dozen railroad ties into the hole, floated them
+into position, covered them with dirt, built the fire, lowered the carcass
+of the steer, covered it with green leaves and filled the hole. &ldquo;An unforgettable
+feast,&rdquo; agreed the scores who had come from places 100 miles
+away.</p>
+<p>Sitting beside me was a prominent Los Angeles attorney, eminent
+<span class="pb" id="Page_153">153</span>
+in the councils of the Democratic party in both state and nation. &ldquo;Why,&rdquo;
+he asked, &ldquo;will a man wear himself out in the city when he can really
+live in a little place like this?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought of suicide at first,&rdquo; said Patsy, young matron with three
+healthy little stairsteps. &ldquo;My husband said &lsquo;for heaven&rsquo;s sake, go out for
+a month and have a good time.&rsquo; I went. Back in a week.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A Vermont girl said she had come to escape a straightlaced code that
+constantly reminded her sin was everywhere. &ldquo;Here I&rsquo;ve got an even
+break with the devil....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>All had found something that clicked with something inside of them
+which challenged something in civilization. Maybe it was expressed in
+the dogma of the Tennessee judge reared in the hill country of the Cumberland
+river. As he stepped from his plane on his annual vacation he
+was cornered by a reporter: &ldquo;Judge, you&rsquo;re 94 years old. What do you
+think of this modern world?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Best one I know about.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No criticism?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;None whatever. Maybe a few minor changes. Just now we are
+being educated out of common sense into ignorance; lawed out of
+patriotism; taxed into poverty; doctored to death and preached to
+hell....&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_154">154</div>
+<h2 id="c24"><span class="small">Chapter XXII</span>
+<br />Lost Mines. The Breyfogle and Others</h2>
+<p>The most famous lost mine in the Death Valley area is the Lost
+Breyfogle. There are many versions of the legend, but all agree that
+somewhere in the bowels of those rugged mountains is a colossal mass
+of gold, which Jacob Breyfogle found and lost.</p>
+<p>Jacob Breyfogle was a prospector who roamed the country around
+Pioche and Austin, Nevada, with infrequent excursions into the Death
+valley area. He traveled alone.</p>
+<p>Indian George, Hungry Bill, and Panamint Tom saw Breyfogle several
+times in the country around Stovepipe Wells, but they could never
+trace him to his claim. When followed, George said, Breyfogle would
+step off the trail and completely disappear. Once George told me about
+trailing him into the Funeral Range. He pointed to the bare mountain.
+&ldquo;Him there, me see. Pretty quick&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, puckered his lips.
+&ldquo;Whoop&mdash;no see.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Breyfogle left a crude map of his course. All lost mines must have
+a map. Conspicuous on this map are the Death Valley Buttes which are
+landmarks. Because he was seen so much here, it was assumed that his
+operations were in the low foothills. I have seen a rough copy of this
+map made from the original in possession of &ldquo;Wildrose&rdquo; Frank Kennedy&rsquo;s
+squaw, Lizzie.</p>
+<p>Breyfogle presumably coming from his mine, was accosted near
+Stovepipe Wells by Panamint Tom, Hungry Bill, and a young buck
+related to them, known as Johnny. Hungry Bill, from habit, begged for
+food. Breyfogle refused, explaining that he had but a morsel and
+several hard days&rsquo; journey before him. On his burro he had a small
+sack of ore. When Breyfogle left, Hungry Bill said, &ldquo;Him no good.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Incited by Hungry Bill and possible loot, the Indians followed Breyfogle
+for three or four days across the range. Hungry Bill stopped en
+route, sent the younger Indians ahead. At Stump Springs east of Shoshone,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_155">155</span>
+Breyfogle was eating his dinner when the Indians sneaked out
+of the brush and scalped him, took what they wished of his possessions
+and left him for dead.</p>
+<p>Ash Meadows Charlie, a chief of the Indians in that area confided
+to Herman Jones that he had witnessed this assault. This happened on
+the Yundt Ranch, or as it is better known, the Manse Ranch. Yundt
+and Aaron Winters accidentally came upon Breyfogle unconscious on
+the ground. The scalp wound was fly-blown. They had a mule team
+and light wagon and hurried to San Bernardino with the wounded man.
+The ore, a chocolate quartz, was thrown into the wagon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I saw some of it at Phi Lee&rsquo;s home, the Resting Spring Ranch,&rdquo;
+Shorty Harris said. &ldquo;It was the richest ore I ever saw. Fifty pounds
+yielded nearly $6000.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Breyfogle recovered, but thereafter was regarded as slightly &ldquo;off.&rdquo;
+He returned to Austin, Nevada, and the story followed.</p>
+<p>Wildrose (Frank) Kennedy, an experienced mining man obtained a
+copy of Breyfogle&rsquo;s map and combed the country around the buttes in
+an effort to locate the mine. Kennedy had the aid of the Indians and
+was able to obtain, through his squaw Lizzie, such information as Indians
+had about the going and coming of the elusive Breyfogle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some believe the ore came from around Daylight Springs,&rdquo; Shorty
+said, &ldquo;but old Lizzie&rsquo;s map had no mark to indicate Daylight Springs.
+But it does show the buttes and the only buttes in Death Valley are
+those above Stovepipe Wells.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Kennedy interested Henry E. Findley, an old time Colorado sheriff
+and Clarence Nyman, for years a prospector for Coleman and Smith (the
+Pacific Borax Company). They induced Mat Cullen, a rich Salt Lake
+mining man, to leave his business and come out. They made three trips
+into the valley, looking for that gold. It&rsquo;s there somewhere.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At Austin, Breyfogle was outfitted several times to relocate the
+property, but when he reached the lower elevation of the valley, he
+seemed to suffer some aberration which would end the trip. His last
+grubstaker was not so considerate. He told Breyfogle that if he didn&rsquo;t
+find the mine promptly he&rsquo;d make a sieve of him and was about to do it
+when a companion named Atchison intervened and saved his life.
+Shortly afterward, Breyfogle died from the old wound.</p>
+<p>Indian George, repeating a story told him by Panamint Tom, once
+told me that Tom had traced Breyfogle to the mine and after Breyfogle&rsquo;s
+death went back and secured some of the ore. Tom guarded his secret.
+He covered the opening with stone and leaving, walked backwards,
+obliterating his tracks with a greasewood brush. Later when Tom
+returned prepared to get the gold he found that a cloudburst had filled
+<span class="pb" id="Page_156">156</span>
+the canyon with boulders, gravel and silt, removing every landmark and
+Breyfogle&rsquo;s mine was lost again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some day maybe,&rdquo; George said, &ldquo;big rain come and wash um out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Among the freighters of the early days was John Delameter who
+believed the Breyfogle was in the lower Panamint. Delameter operated
+a 20 mule team freighting service between Daggett and points in
+both Death Valley and Panamint Valley. He told me that he found
+Breyfogle down in the road about twenty-eight miles south of Ballarat
+with a wound in his leg. Breyfogle had come into the Panamint from
+Pioche, Nevada, and said he had been attacked by Indians, his horses
+stolen, while working on his claim which he located merely with a
+gesture toward the mountains.</p>
+<p>Subsequently Delameter made several vain efforts to locate the
+property, but like most lost mines it continues to be lost. But for years
+it was good bait for a grubstake and served both the convincing liar
+and the honest prospector.</p>
+<p>Nearly all old timers had a version of the Lost Breyfogle differing
+in details but all agreeing on the chocolate quartz and its richness.</p>
+<p>That Breyfogle really lost a valuable mine there can be little doubt,
+but since he is authentically traced from the northern end of Death
+Valley to the southern, and since the chocolate quartz is found in many
+places of that area, one who cares to look for it must cover a large
+territory.</p>
+<p class="tb">One mine that had never been found turned up in a way as amazing
+as most of them are lost.</p>
+<p>At Pioche, Nevada, an assayer was suspected of giving greater
+values to samples than they merited. It is known as the &ldquo;come on.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In order to trap the suspect, a prospector broke off a piece of old
+grindstone and ordered an assay. &ldquo;If he gives that any value, it&rsquo;s proof
+enough he&rsquo;s a crook,&rdquo; he told his friends.</p>
+<p>Proof of guilt came with the assayer&rsquo;s report. The grindstone was
+incredibly rich in silver, it said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got the goods on him now,&rdquo; the outraged prospector announced
+and it was decided to give the assayer a coat of tar and
+feathers. Wiser counsel was accepted, however, and it was decided to
+give him no more business. The fellow was faced with the alternative
+of starving or leaving the country, when he learned the reason of the
+boycott. Conscious of no error in his work, he made another and more
+careful assay. This time the samples yielded even higher values.</p>
+<p>It was agreed by all mining engineers of that day that rock like the
+samples never carried silver or gold. But the assayer knew his furnace
+<span class="pb" id="Page_157">157</span>
+hadn&rsquo;t lied and he couldn&rsquo;t believe grindstone makers were mixing silver
+with sand to make the stones. So he traced the grindstone to the quarry
+it came from. The result was the Silver King, one of the richest silver
+mines.</p>
+<p class="tb">THE LOST GUNSIGHT. The first lost mine in Death Valley,
+preceding that of Breyfogle&rsquo;s by four or five years, was the Gunsight.</p>
+<p>A survivor of the Jayhawkers or the Bennett-Arcane party of &rsquo;49
+(it is not clear to which he belonged) after escaping death in the valley,
+saw a deer or antelope and on the point of starvation, took his gun from
+its strap to shoot the animal. Seeing that the sight had been lost, he
+picked up a thin piece of shale and wedged it in the sight slot. Later
+he took the weapon to a gunsmith who removed the makeshift sight
+and upon examination found it to be almost pure silver. &ldquo;Where I
+picked it up,&rdquo; said the owner, &ldquo;there was a mountain of it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So begins the history of the Lost Gunsight and the story spread as
+stories will, until ten years later it reached the ears of Dr. Darwin
+French of Oroville, previously mentioned. The doctor became excited
+and in the spring of 1860 organized a party to locate the fabulous
+mountain of silver. Though he searched bravely he failed to find it.
+However, he brought back the first authentic account of what others
+with a flair for lost mines could expect in the way of weather, topography,
+Indians, edible game, vegetation, and water. On this trip, however,
+he discovered silver in the Coso Range.</p>
+<p>The following year, 1861, Dr. S. G. George who had been with the
+French party, decided he could find the Lost Gunsight and organized
+an expedition which crossed Panamint Valley, explored Wild Rose
+Canyon and reached the highest spot in Death Valley. But Dr. George&rsquo;s
+valiant efforts were no luckier than those of Dr. French.</p>
+<p>William Manly, author of &ldquo;Death Valley in Forty-Nine&rdquo; also tried
+but gained only another tragic experience and came nearer losing his
+life than he did with the Forty-Niners. Lost and without water and
+beaten to his knees, he was deserted by companions and escaped death
+by a miracle. How many have lost their lives trying to find the Gunsight
+no one knows. There are scores of sunken mounds on lonely mesas
+which an old timer will explain tersely: &ldquo;He was looking for the Gunsight.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dr. French, after his failure, pursued another and even more intriguing
+lost mine. With a ready ear for tales of treasure, he heard of
+a tribe of Indians in the Death Valley area who were making bullets
+for their rifles out of gold. Accordingly he organized another party
+to find the gold.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_158">158</div>
+<p>For eleven months Dr. French and his hand-picked comrades
+combed the country. The gold they found would have loaded no gun,
+but you may add the Lost Bullet to your list of lost mines. A member
+of this party was John Searles, for whom Searles&rsquo; Lake is named.</p>
+<p>Because early prospectors searched for Breyfogle&rsquo;s lost mine throughout
+the region where he was found scalped, an interesting digression is
+not amiss.</p>
+<p>A few miles east of Shoshone, there is a Gunsight mine named, of
+course, by the discoverer in the hope that he&rsquo;d found the one so long
+lost. It adjoins the Noonday and was a valuable property which belonged
+to Dr. L. D. Godshall of Victorville.</p>
+<p>The Noonday produced five million dollars and was operated until
+silver and lead took a price dive. A 12 mile railroad was built from
+Tecopa to haul the ore. The steel rails were later hauled away and the
+ties went into construction of desert homes, sheds, fences, and firewood.
+For years the two properties could have been bought for what-have-you.</p>
+<p>Then came Pearl Harbor and a young Kentuckian, Buford Davis,
+looking around for lead or any essential ores that Uncle Sam could use,
+dropped off at Shoshone. Charles Brown told him of the Gunsight and
+the Noonday. Davis inspected the properties, bought them for a relatively
+small down payment. He chose to begin operations on the
+Noonday and sent Ernie Huhn, an experienced miner to deepen the
+shaft.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Honest to God,&rdquo; Ernie told me, &ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t dug a foot when I turned
+up the prettiest vein of lead I&rsquo;d ever seen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the next six years the Noonday produced approximately a gross
+of nine million dollars and a net of probably six million dollars.</p>
+<p>These figures were given me by Don Kempfer, mining engineer and
+Shoshone resident, from estimates which he believed accurate.</p>
+<p>In 1947 with the rich rewards attained but as yet unenjoyed, Buford
+Davis made a hurried airplane trip to Salt Lake. Returning, he was only
+a few moments from a safe landing when the plane crashed and all
+aboard were killed.</p>
+<p>Today, (1950) the property belongs to Anaconda and is considered
+one of its most valuable mines.</p>
+<p>For those interested in lost mines I offer the list that follows. (The
+names are my own.)</p>
+<p class="tb">THE LOST CHINAMAN: When John Searles was struggling to
+make a living out of the ooze that is called Searles&rsquo; Lake he had a mule
+skinner known as Salty Bill Parkinson&mdash;a fearless, hard-bitten individual
+who was the Paul Bunyan of Death Valley teamsters.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_159">159</div>
+<p>While loading a wagon with borax, Salty Bill and Searles noticed
+a man staggering down from the Slate Range. They decided he was
+supercharged with desert likker and paid scant attention as he wobbled
+across the flat from the base of the range. A moment later he fell at
+their feet. They saw then that he was a Chinaman; that his tongue was
+swollen, his eyes red and sunken; that he clutched at his throat in a
+vain effort to speak. He could make no intelligible sound and lapsed
+into unconsciousness. They thought he had died and was left on their
+hands for burial.</p>
+<p>Salty Bill afterwards stated that he&rsquo;d said to Searles: &ldquo;&lsquo;Fremont, Carson, or the Mormons old Bill Williams, for whom Bill
+Williams River, Bill Williams Mountain, and the town of Williams,
+Arizona, are named was at Resting Springs.
+He&rsquo;ll spoil in
+an hour. I&rsquo;ll go for a shovel while you choose a place to plant him.&rsquo;
+I&rsquo;d actually turned to go when Searles called me back.&rdquo; Searles had
+seen some sign of life and after removing a canvas bag strapped to his
+body they took him to a nearby shed, gave him a few spoonfuls of water
+and eventually he was restored to consciousness. He lay in a semi-stupor
+all the afternoon and was obsessed with the idea that he was
+going to die. His chief concern was to get to Mojave so that he could
+take a stage for a seaport and die in China or failing, arrange for the
+burial of his bones with those of his ancestors.</p>
+<p>He had been working at Old Harmony Borax Works, picking cotton-ball
+borax with other Chinese employed by the company, but tiring
+of abuse by a tough boss, he&rsquo;d asked for his wages and walked out.
+Some Piutes told him of a short cut across the Panamint and this he
+took.</p>
+<p>En route he picked up a piece of rich float, stuck it into his bag.
+Farther on his journey he ran out of water and became hopelessly
+lost. He managed to reach the Slate Range, however, and from the
+summit saw Searles&rsquo; Lake. Though in no condition to stand the rough
+trip to Mojave he begged to be sent there and yielding finally, Salty
+Bill, ready to leave with his load, threw the Chinaman on his wagon
+and started on his trip.</p>
+<p>Before reaching Mojave, the Chinaman&rsquo;s condition became worse
+and Salty Bill stopped the team in answer to his yells. The canvas sack
+lay alongside the stricken Chinaman and reaching for it, he brought out
+a lump of ore.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never in my life,&rdquo; said Salty Bill, &ldquo;have I seen ore like that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Chinaman gave the ore to Salty, thanked him for his friendly
+treatment, told him that at a place in the Panamint where &ldquo;the Big
+Timber pitches down into a steep canyon,&rdquo; he had found the float.
+Again he expressed his belief that he was going to die and exacted
+a promise from Salty that if death came before reaching Mojave, Salty
+would see that his remains be shipped to China, adding that any Chinaman
+<span class="pb" id="Page_160">160</span>
+in Mojave would provide money if needed. &ldquo;You find the gold
+and keep it,&rdquo; he told Salty. &ldquo;For me&mdash;no good. No can....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The journey was completed and Salty learned that the Chinaman
+did die at Mojave and that a countryman there saw that the remains
+were sent to the Flowery Kingdom.</p>
+<p>Salty Bill showed the ore to John Searles and Searles, usually indifferent
+to yarns of hidden ledges, was even more excited than Salty.
+For four or five years the two men made trips in search of the place
+where Big Timber pitches into a canyon. After these, other tireless
+prospectors sought the elusive ledge but the Lost Chinaman is still lost.</p>
+<p class="tb">THE LOST WAGON. Jim Hurley went to Parker, Arizona. Broke,
+he wanted quick money and was looking for placer. The storekeeper
+was a friend of Jim and had previously staked him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m looking for a place to wash out some gold, but I&rsquo;ve no money
+and no grub....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jim was told of a butte on the Colorado Desert. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s good placer
+ground and you ought to pan a few dollars without much trouble....&rdquo;
+He provided Jim with bacon and beans and feed for his burros.</p>
+<p>Jim set out, found the butte, but no gold and decided to try a new
+location. On the way out he saw behind some bushes an old wagon
+that seemed to be half buried in blow sand. Thinking it would be a
+good feeding place for his burros, he went over. On the ground nearby
+he saw the bleached skeleton of a man. He threw aside a half-rotted
+tarpaulin in the wagon bed and discovered fifteen sacks of ore.</p>
+<p>It was obvious that the wagon had stood there for a long time. He
+examined the ore and saw that it was rich and of a peculiar color. He
+loaded the ore on his burros, returned to Parker and sent it to the
+smelter. He received in return, $1800. Losing no time, Jim returned
+to find the source of the ore and though for the next five years he
+looked at intervals for a quartz to match that found in the wagon, he
+could find nothing that even resembled it. Where it came from no prospector
+on the desert would even venture an opinion, but all declared
+they had seen no quartz of that peculiar color and all of them knew
+the country from Mexico to Nevada.</p>
+<p>But Jim added to his store an adventure and a memory and there
+is no treasure in this life richer than a memory.</p>
+<p class="tb">THE LOST GOLLER. This, I believe, is a lost mine that really
+exists and though the location has been prospected from the days of Dr.
+Darwin French in 1860, none have looked for it except the one who
+<span class="pb" id="Page_161">161</span>
+lost it in 1850. He was John Goller, who came to California with the
+Jayhawkers.</p>
+<p>Goller was a blacksmith and wagon maker and was the first American
+to establish such a business in the pueblo of Los Angeles. After
+convincing the native Californian that his spoke-wheel wagon would
+function as effectively as the rounded slabs of wood, the only vehicles
+then used, he made a comfortable fortune and no one in the pueblo had
+a reputation for better character.</p>
+<p>Crossing the Panamint, Goller, though strong and husky, became
+separated from his companions and barely escaped with his life. Coming
+down a Panamint canyon he found some gold nuggets and filled his
+pockets with them. After crossing Panamint Valley and the Slate Range,
+he was found by Mexican vaqueros of Don Ignacio del Valle, owner of
+the great Camulos Rancho. After his recovery he proceeded to Los
+Angeles. In showing the nuggets to friends he said, &ldquo;I could have filled
+a wagon with them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Goller, because of his means was soon able to take vacations which
+were devoted to looking for the lost location, and though he searched
+for years he found no more nuggets. Finally he found a canyon which
+he believed might have been the site, but no wagon load of nuggets.</p>
+<p>John Goller was a solid, clear-thinking man&mdash;not the type to chase
+the rainbow. Gold is known to exist in the canyon and some mines have
+been operated with varying success, but none have been outstanding. It
+is quite possible that cloudbursts for which the Panamint is noted washed
+Goller&rsquo;s gold away or buried it under an avalanche of rock, dirt, and
+gravel. Manly, with his forgivable inclination to error refers to Goller
+as Galler and discounts the story.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; said Dr. Samuel Slocum, a man who made a fortune
+in gold, &ldquo;somebody will find a fabulously rich mine in that canyon.&rdquo; It
+is located about 12 miles south of Ballarat and is called Goler canyon&mdash;one
+of the l&rsquo;s in Goller&rsquo;s name having been dropped.</p>
+<p class="tb">THE LOST SPOOK. A spiritualist with tuberculosis came to Ballarat
+and employed an Indian known as Joe Button as packer and guide.
+He told Joe to lead him to the driest spot in the country. Joe took him
+into the Cottonwood Range and left him. The invalid remained for several
+weeks, returned to Ballarat en route to San Bernardino, presumably
+for supplies. He was reticent as to his luck but he had several small sacks
+filled with ore and in his haste to catch the stage, dropped a piece of
+quartz from a loosely tied sack. It was almost solid gold and weighed
+eight ounces.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_162">162</div>
+<p>While in San Bernardino he died. His relatives sold the remaining
+ore, which yielded $7200. They tried to find the claim but failed.</p>
+<p>Shorty Harris heard of it months afterward and looked up Joe Button.
+With his own burros, Joe&rsquo;s pack horses, and an Indian known as
+Ignacio, he set out. Cloudbursts had washed out the previous trails, filled
+gulches, levelled hills and so transformed the country that the Indian
+was unable to find any trace of his previous course; gave up the hunt and
+turned back.</p>
+<p>Shorty cached his supplies and with the meager description Joe
+could give him, searched for weeks. At last he came upon a camp where
+he discovered a collection of pamphlets dealing with the occult, but no
+trails. It was apparent that these had been destroyed by floods and for
+two months Shorty searched for the diggings. A brush pile aroused his
+suspicions and removing it, he found the hole. &ldquo;The ore had Uncle Sam&rsquo;s
+eagle all over it,&rdquo; Shorty said, &ldquo;and the world was mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I returned to my camp, started spending the money. A million
+dollars for a rest home for old worn-out prospectors. Fifty thousand a
+year for all my pals....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Shorty ate his supper, spread his blankets and went to sleep with
+his dream. In the middle of the night he awoke. Something was running
+over his blanket. He raised up and in the moonlight recognized
+the only thing on earth he was afraid of&mdash;the &ldquo;hydrophobic skunk.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I started packing right now,&rdquo; Shorty said, &ldquo;and walked out. There&rsquo;s
+a mine there and whoever wants it can have it. I don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="tb">THE LOST CANYON has some evidence of reality. Jack Allen, a
+miner and prospector of almost superhuman endurance, got drunk at
+Skidoo and filled with remorse and shame the morning after, decided to
+leave and seek a job at the Keane Wonder Mine, about 40 miles northeast
+across Death Valley. To save distance, Allen took a short cut over
+Sheep Mountain and in going through a canyon he picked up a piece of
+quartz and seeing a fleck of color, he broke it. Excited by its apparent
+richness he filled his pockets, noted his bearings and went on his way.
+When he reached the Keane Wonder he took the ore to Joe McGilliland,
+the company&rsquo;s assayer, who became more excited than the finder.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll put it in the button for half,&rdquo; Joe said.</p>
+<p>Allen agreed. The assay showed values as high as $20,000 to the
+ton. He closed his office and ran out to find Jack working in the mine.
+&ldquo;Chuck this job,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Go back to that claim quick as you can.
+Get your monuments up and record the notices.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jack Allen bought a burro, loaded his supplies and went back only
+to discover that a cloudburst had destroyed all his landmarks.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_163">163</div>
+<p>Both Shorty Harris and &ldquo;Bob&rdquo; Eichbaum, who established Stove
+Pipe Wells resort, considered this the best chance among all the legends
+of lost mines. It is wild, rough, and largely virgin country and because
+of that the hardiest prospectors always passed it by.</p>
+<p class="tb">THE LOST JOHNNIE. An Indian known as Johnnie used to come
+into York&rsquo;s store at Ballarat about once a month with gold in bullion
+form. He would sell it to York or trade it for supplies. Frequently he
+had credits amounting to a thousand or more dollars.</p>
+<p>Other Indians soon learned of Johnnie&rsquo;s mine and would trail him
+when he left town, but none were able to outsmart him. That it was
+near Arastre Spring was generally believed. Upon one occasion Johnnie
+was seen leaving the old arastre and disappear in the canyon. Immediately
+evidence that the arastre had been used within the hour was
+discovered. For years no prospector worked in that region without keeping
+his eyes peeled for Johnnie&rsquo;s bonanza.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_164">164</div>
+<h2 id="c25"><span class="small">Chapter XXIII</span>
+<br />Panamint City. Genial Crooks</h2>
+<p>The first search for gold in Death Valley country was in Panamint
+Valley.</p>
+<p>From the summit of the Slate Range on the road from Trona, one
+comes suddenly upon an enchanting and unforgettable view of the
+Panamint. If you are one who thrills at breath taking scenery you will
+not speak. You will stand and look and think. Your thoughts will be
+of dead worlds; of the silence spread like a shroud over all that you see.</p>
+<p>Below, a yellow road twists in and out of hidden dry washes, around
+jutting hills to end in the green mesquite that hides the ghost town of
+Ballarat. There the Panamint lifts two miles&mdash;its gored sides a riot of
+pastelled colors.</p>
+<p>If you have coached yourself with trivia of history it will require
+imagination&rsquo;s aid to accept the fact that from this wasteland came
+fortunes and industries of world-wide fame. From New York to San
+Francisco on envied social thrones, sit the children and grandchildren
+of those who with pick and shovel, here dug the family fortune in
+ragged overalls.</p>
+<p>Only recently a descendant of one of these, living in a city far removed,
+informed me her mansion was for sale, &ldquo;because the neighborhood
+is being ruined....&rdquo; A sheep herder newly rich on war profits,
+was moving in.</p>
+<p>Eleven miles north of Ballarat, Surprise Canyon, which leads to
+Panamint City, opens on a broad, alluvial fan that tilts sharply to the
+valley floor.</p>
+<p>In April, 1873, W. T. Henderson, whose first trip into Death Valley
+country was made to find the Lost Gunsight, came again with R. B.
+Stewart and R. C. Jacobs. In Surprise Canyon they discovered silver
+which ran as high as $4000 a ton and filed more than 80 location
+notices.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_165">165</div>
+<p>Henderson was an adventurer of uncertain character who had
+roamed western deserts like a nomad. During the Indian war that
+threatened extermination of the white settlers in Inyo county, Thieving
+Charlie, a Piute, was induced by outnumbered whites to approach his
+warring tribesmen under a flag of truce and succeeded in getting eleven
+of them to return with him to Camp Independence for a peace talk.
+Henderson, with two companions waylaid and murdered them.</p>
+<p>He had been a member of the posse organized by Harry Love to
+shoot on sight California&rsquo;s most famous bandit&mdash;Joaquin Murietta
+and boasted that he fired the bullet which killed the glamorous Joaquin.
+It was he who cut off and pickled the bandit&rsquo;s head as evidence to get
+the reward. At the same time he pickled the hand of Three Fingered
+Jack Garcia, Joaquin&rsquo;s chief lieutenant, and the bloodiest monster the
+West ever saw. Garcia had an odd habit of cutting off the ears of his
+victims and stringing them for a saddle ornament. The slaying of
+Joaquin was not a pretty adventure and as the details came out, Henderson
+renounced the honor.</p>
+<p>The grewsome vouchers which obtained the reward became the
+attraction for the morbid on a San Francisco street and there above the
+din of traffic one heard a spieler chant the thrills it gave &ldquo;for only two
+measly bits....&rdquo; The exhibit was destroyed in the San Francisco fire
+and earthquake of 1906.</p>
+<p>In his book, &ldquo;On the Old West Coast&rdquo; Major Horace Bell states
+that Henderson confided to him there was never a day nor night that
+Joaquin Murietta did not come to him and though headless, would
+demand the return of his head; that Henderson was never frightened
+by the apparition, which would vanish after Henderson explained why
+he couldn&rsquo;t return the head and his excuse for cutting it off.</p>
+<p>Bell quotes Henderson: &ldquo;I would never have cut Joaquin&rsquo;s head off
+except for the excitement of the chase and the orders of Harry Love.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To give credence to the ghost story he says of Henderson, &ldquo;He was
+for several years my neighbor and a more genial and generous fellow I
+never met....&rdquo; Major Bell, it is known, was not always strictly
+factual.</p>
+<p>Following the Surprise Canyon strike, Panamint City was quickly
+built and quickly filled with thugs who lived by their guns; gamblers
+and painted girls who lived by their wits.</p>
+<p>An engaging sidewalk promoter known as E. P. Raines, who
+possessed a good front and gall in abundance, but no money, assured
+the owners of the Panamint claims that he could raise the capital necessary
+for development. He set out for the city, registered at the leading
+hotel, attached the title of Colonel to his name; exchanged a worthless
+<span class="pb" id="Page_166">166</span>
+check for $25 and made for the barroom. It was no mere coincidence
+that Mr. Raines before ordering his drink, parked himself alongside
+a group of the town&rsquo;s richest citizens and began to toy with an
+incredibly rich sample of ore. It was natural that members of the group
+should notice it. Particularly the multimillionaire, Senator John P. Jones,
+Nevada silver king.</p>
+<p>Soon the charming crook was the life of the party. His $25 spent,
+he actually borrowed $1000 from Jones. Having drunk his guests under
+the table, Mr. Raines went forth for further celebration and landed broke
+in the hoosegow. Hearing of his misadventure, his new friends promptly
+went to his rescue. &ldquo;... Outrage ... biggest night this town ever
+had....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To make amends for the city&rsquo;s inhospitable blunder, Raines was
+taken to his hostelry, given a champagne bracer and made the honor
+guest at breakfast. &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the Senator?&rdquo; he asked. Informed that
+Senator Jones had taken a train for Washington, Raines quickened
+&ldquo;Why, he was expecting me to go with him....&rdquo; He jumped up,
+fumbled through his pockets in a pretended search for money. &ldquo;Heavens&mdash;my
+purse is gone!&rdquo; Instantly a half dozen hands reached for the hip
+and Mr. Raines was on his way.</p>
+<p>It required but a few moments to get $15,000 from the Senator
+and his partner, Senator William R. Stewart, for the Panamint claims.
+He also sold Jones the idea of a railroad from a seaport at Los Angeles
+to his mines and this was partially built. The project ended in Cajon
+Pass. The scars of the tunnel started may still be seen.</p>
+<p>Jones and Stewart organized the Panamint Mining Company with
+a capital of $2,000,000. Other claims were bought but immediate
+development was delayed by difficulties in obtaining title because many
+of the owners were outlaws, difficult to find. A few were located in the
+penitentiary and there received payment. For some of the claims the
+promoters paid $350,000.</p>
+<p>On June 29, 1875, the first mill began to crush ore from the Jacobs
+Wonder mine. Panamint City became one of the toughest and most
+colorful camps of the West. It was strung for a mile up and down
+narrow Surprise Canyon. It was believed that here was a mass of silver
+greater than that on the Comstock and shares were active on the
+markets.</p>
+<p>The most pretentious saloon in the town was that of Dave Nagle,
+who later as the bodyguard of U. S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J.
+Field, killed Judge David Terry, distinguished jurist, but stormy petrel
+of California Vigilante days. Judge Terry had represented, then married
+his client, the Rose of Sharon&mdash;Sarah Althea Hill&mdash;in her suit to
+<span class="pb" id="Page_167">167</span>
+determine whether she was wife or mistress of Senator Sharon, Comstock
+millionaire. Feuding had resulted with Field, the trial judge.
+Meeting in a railroad dining room, Judge Terry slapped Justice Field&rsquo;s
+face and Nagle promptly killed Terry.</p>
+<p>Poker at Panamint City was never a piker&rsquo;s game. Bets of $10,000
+on two pair attracted but little comment. Gunning was regarded as a
+minor nuisance, but funerals worried the town&rsquo;s butcher. He had the
+only wagon that had survived the steep canyon road into the camp. &ldquo;I
+bought it,&rdquo; he complained, &ldquo;to haul fresh meat, but since there&rsquo;s no
+hearse I never know when I&rsquo;ll have to unload a quarter of beef to haul
+a stiff to Sourdough Canyon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Panamint City attained an estimated population of 3,000. Harris
+and Rhine, merchants, having the only safe in the town permitted
+patrons to deposit money for safe keeping and often had large sums.
+On one occasion they had the $10,000 payroll of the Hemlock mine.</p>
+<p>A clerk arriving early at the store, suddenly faced two gentlemen
+who directed him to open the safe and pass out the money. &ldquo;Just as well
+count it as you fork it over,&rdquo; one ordered. The clerk had counted $4000
+when he was told to stop. &ldquo;This&rsquo;ll do for the present,&rdquo; the spokesman
+said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll come back and get the rest.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yeh,&rdquo; added his partner. &ldquo;Too damned many thugs in this town.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They sallied forth on a spending spree. The down-and-out along
+the mile-long street received generous portions of the loot and a widow
+whose husband had been killed in a mine explosion, received $500.</p>
+<p>These bandits, Small and McDonald, thereafter became incredibly
+popular and the legend follows that what they stole from those who
+had, they shared with those who hadn&rsquo;t.</p>
+<p>Wells-Fargo and Company offered a reward of $1000 for their
+capture, but their arrest was never accomplished. Invariably they were
+apprised of the approach of pursuers and simply retired to some convenient
+canyon. The bandits further endeared themselves to the citizenry
+when Stewart and Jones arranged for the importation of a hundred
+Chinese laborers.</p>
+<p>This aroused the ire of the white miners and a meeting was called
+to protest. &ldquo;This is a white man&rsquo;s town,&rdquo; was the cry of labor.</p>
+<p>Small and McDonald agreed. &ldquo;Just leave it to us,&rdquo; they told the
+leaders. &ldquo;No use in a lotta fellows getting hurt.&rdquo; They stationed themselves
+at the mouth of the canyon and when the coolies arrived, a
+sudden volley from the bandits&rsquo; six-guns brought the caravan to a halt.
+The frightened Chinamen leaped from the hacks and fled in panic
+across the desert and Panamint remained a white man&rsquo;s town.</p>
+<p>Engaged at work around their hideout, Hungry Bill stopped to beg
+<span class="pb" id="Page_168">168</span>
+for food. They told the Indian to wait until they finished their task.
+His sullen impatience angered Small who booted him down the trail.
+Hungry Bill left cursing and told a prospector whom he met that he
+would return shortly with his tribesmen and assassinate the entire
+population.</p>
+<p>Panamint City was warned but Small and McDonald declared that
+since they had started the trouble, they alone should end it. Accordingly,
+they set out for Hungry Bill&rsquo;s ranch to stop the attack before it
+started. But near Hungry Bill&rsquo;s stone corral they were ambushed by the
+Indians. The bandits shot their way into the corral and barricading
+themselves, killed and wounded about half of the renegades, after which
+the remainder fled.</p>
+<p>Panamint City harbored a hoard of unsung assassins who merely
+lay in wait, shot the unwary victim down, took his poke, rolled the
+body into a ravine, went up town to spend the money.</p>
+<p>One killer who came decided to dominate the field and with that in
+view he set forth to establish himself quickly as a gunman not to be
+trifled with. He chose to display his prowess upon an inoffensive, quiet
+faro dealer known as Jimmy Bruce, who, it was easy to see, &ldquo;was just
+a chicken-livered punk.&rdquo; The publicity of a well-done murder in such a
+setting would give prestige.</p>
+<p>Armed with two guns, the bully contrived to start an argument with
+Bruce. The indoor white of the gambler seemed to grow whiter as the
+rage of his towering tormenter reached the climax. The players moved
+out of range. The bartenders ducked under the counter. Patrons helpless
+to intervene, fled from the kill.</p>
+<p>A shot rang out. Cautiously, the bartenders lifted their heads. On
+the floor lay the bad man. Mr. Bruce was calmly lighting a cigar.</p>
+<p>There was consternation among the killers. They swore vengeance.
+After five of them had fallen before Bruce&rsquo;s gun, he was let alone.</p>
+<p>The silent faro dealer, it was learned too late, was surpassingly
+quick on the trigger.</p>
+<p>A spot somewhat distant from the regular cemetery was chosen for
+the burial place and it became known as Jim Bruce&rsquo;s private graveyard.</p>
+<p>Remi Nadeau, a French Canadian, was the first to haul freight into
+Panamint City. Nadeau was a genius of transportation. There was no
+country too rough, too remote, too wild for him. He came to Los
+Angeles in 1861 from Utah and teamed as far east as Montana.</p>
+<p>The Cerro Gordo mine, on the eastern side of Owens Lake in Inyo
+County began to ship ore in 1869 and Nadeau obtained a contract to
+haul the ore to Wilmington where it was shipped by boat to San Francisco.
+He soon had to increase his equipment to 32 teams, using more
+<span class="pb" id="Page_169">169</span>
+than 500 animals. For his return trip he bought such commodities as he
+could peddle or leave for sale at stations he built along the route.</p>
+<p>In 1872, the contract having expired, Judson and Belshaw, owners
+of the mine, received a lower bid and Nadeau was left with 500 horses
+on his hands and heavily in debt. He wanted to dispose of his outfit for
+the benefit of his creditors but they had confidence in him and persuaded
+him to &ldquo;carry on.&rdquo; Borax discovered in Nevada saved him.
+Meanwhile the lower bidder on the Cerro Gordo job proved unsatisfactory
+and Judson and Belshaw asked Nadeau to take the old job back.
+But now Nadeau informed them they would have to buy a half interest
+in his outfit and advance $150,000 to construct relay stations at Mud
+Springs, Mojave, Lang&rsquo;s Springs, Red Rock, Little Lake, Cartago, and
+other points. They gladly agreed.</p>
+<p>Shortly after Nadeau began hauling across the desert, he picked up
+a man suffering from gunshot and crazed from thirst. Taking the victim
+to his nearest station, he left instructions that he be cared for.</p>
+<p>Sometime afterward, one of Nadeau&rsquo;s competitors whose trains had
+been held up several times by outlaws, wondered why none of Nadeau&rsquo;s
+teams or stations had been molested. At the time, Nadeau himself didn&rsquo;t
+know that the fellow whom he&rsquo;d picked up on the desert was Tiburcio
+Vasquez, the bandit terror.</p>
+<p>Vasquez naively condoned his banditry. It disgusted him at dances
+he said, to see the senoritas of his race favor the interloping Americans.
+He had a singular power over women. When Sheriff William Rowland
+effected his capture, women of Los Angeles filled his cell with flowers.
+He was hanged at San Jose.</p>
+<p>Nadeau was now hauling ore from the Minnietta and the Modoc
+mines in the Argus Range on the west side of Panamint Valley. The
+Modoc was the property of George Hearst, the father of the publisher,
+William Randolph Hearst. These mines were directly across the valley
+from Panamint City and because of Nadeau&rsquo;s record for building roads
+in places no other dared to go, Jones and Stewart engaged him to haul
+out of Surprise Canyon, which was barely wide enough in places for a
+burro with a pack.</p>
+<p>On a hill, locally known as &ldquo;Seventeen&rdquo;&mdash;that being the per cent of
+grade, located on the old highway between Ballarat and Trona, one may
+see the dim outline of a road pitching down precipitously to the valley
+floor. This road was built by Nadeau and one marvels that anything
+short of steam power could move a load from bottom to top.</p>
+<p>Acquiring a fortune, Nadeau built the first three-story building in
+Los Angeles and the Nadeau Hotel, long the city&rsquo;s finest, retained favor
+<span class="pb" id="Page_170">170</span>
+among many wealthy pioneer patrons long after the more glamorous
+Angelus and Alexandria were built in the early 1900&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>The first ore from the Panamint mines was shipped to England and
+because of its richness showed a profit, but difficulties arose in recovery
+processes which they did not know how to overcome. The mines would
+have paid fabulously under present day processes.</p>
+<p>Finis was written to the story of Panamint after two hectic years and
+in 1877 Jones and Stewart had lost $2,000,000 and quit. It would be
+more factual to state that since they had received from the public
+$2,000,000 to put into it, who lost what is a guess.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_171">171</div>
+<h2 id="c26"><span class="small">Chapter XXIV</span>
+<br />Indian George. Legend of the Panamint</h2>
+<p>The previous chapter records accepted history of the silver discovery
+at Panamint City. Indian George Hansen had another version which he
+told me at his ranch 11 miles north of Ballarat. It fits the period and
+the people then in the country.</p>
+<p>George, when a youngster lived in the Coso Range. East of the
+Coso there was no white man for 100 miles and renegades fleeing from
+their crimes and deserters from the Union army sought hideouts in the
+Panamint. Thus George was employed as a guide by three outlaws to
+lead them to safe refuge.</p>
+<p>George, a Shoshone, had both friends and relatives among the Shoshones
+and the Piutes and took the bandits into Surprise Canyon where
+a camp for the night was chosen. While staking out his pack animals,
+George discovered a ledge of silver ore. Breaking off a chunk, he stuck
+it into his pocket, saying nothing about it until they were out of the
+locality. Then he showed the specimen and to promote a deal, gave one
+of them a sample. They wanted to see the ledge but George refused to
+disclose it. Then George said the three fellows stepped aside and after
+talking in whispers told him they didn&rsquo;t like the country and returning
+with him to the Coso Range, went on their way. Two or three months
+later they were back to bargain.</p>
+<p>George had traded with the white man before. They had always
+given him a few dollars and a rosy promise. &ldquo;Now me pretty foxy. So
+I say, &lsquo;no want money. Maybe lose.&rsquo; Him say, &lsquo;what hell you want?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Heap good job all time I live.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Okay,&rsquo; him say. &lsquo;We give you job.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I show claim.&rdquo; George paused, a look of smoldering hate in his
+dark eyes, then added: &ldquo;I get job. Two weeks. Him say, &lsquo;you fired.&rsquo; I get
+$50.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_172">172</div>
+<p>All Indians and many of the old timers believe that the ledge
+George found was that for which Jones and Stewart paid $2,000,000.</p>
+<p>George made another deal worthy of mention. The town of Trona
+on Searles&rsquo; Lake needed the water owned by George&rsquo;s relative, Mabel,
+who herded 500 goats and sold them to butchers at Skidoo, Goldfield,
+and Rhyolite where they became veal steak or lamb chops. Trona
+offered $30 a month for the use of the water. Mabel consulted
+George as head man of the Shoshones and advised Trona that the sum
+would not be considered. It must pay $27.50 or do without. A superstition
+regarding numbers accounted for the price George fixed for the
+water.</p>
+<p>My acquaintance with Indian George began on my first trip to
+Ballarat with Shorty Harris and was the result of a stomach ache Shorty
+had. I suggested a trip to a doctor at Trona instead.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir. I&rsquo;ll see old Indian George. If these doctors knew as much
+as these old Indians, there wouldn&rsquo;t be any cemeteries.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I asked what evidence he had of George&rsquo;s skill.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Plenty. You know Sparkplug (Michael Sherlock)? He was in a
+bad way. Fred Gray put a mattress in his pickup, laid Sparkplug on it
+and hauled him over to Trona. Nurses took him inside. Doctor looked
+him over and came out and asked Fred if he knew where old Sparkplug
+wanted to be buried. &lsquo;Why, Ballarat, I reckon,&rsquo; Fred said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you take him back quick. He&rsquo;ll be dead when you get
+there. Better hurry. He&rsquo;ll spoil on you this hot weather.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fred raced back, taking curves on Seventeen with two wheels
+hanging over the gorge, but he made it; stopped in front of Sparkplug&rsquo;s
+shack, jumped out and called to me to bring a pick and shovel. Then
+he ran over to Bob Warnack&rsquo;s shack for help to make a coffin. Indian
+George happened to ride by the pickup and saw Sparkplug&rsquo;s feet sticking
+out. He crawled off his cayuse, took a look, lifted Sparkplug&rsquo;s
+eyelids and leaving his horse ground-hitched, he went out in the brush
+and yanked up some roots here and there. Then he went up to Hungry
+Hattie&rsquo;s and came back with a handful of chicken guts and rabbit
+pellets; brewed &rsquo;em in a tomato can and when he got through he funneled
+it down Sparkplug&rsquo;s throat and in no time at all Sparkplug was
+up and packing his flivver to go prospecting. If you don&rsquo;t believe me,
+there&rsquo;s Sparkplug right over there tinkering with his car.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>George&rsquo;s age has been a favorite topic of writers of Death Valley
+history for the last 30 years.</p>
+<p>I stopped for water once at the little stream flumed out of Hall&rsquo;s
+Canyon to supply the ranch. He was irrigating his alfalfa in a temperature
+<span class="pb" id="Page_173">173</span>
+of 122 degrees. I had brought him three or four dozen oranges
+and suggested that Mabel would like some of the fruit.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Heavy work for a man of your age,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>He bit into an orange, eating both peeling and pulp. &ldquo;Me papoose.
+Me only 107 years old.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There were less than a dozen oranges left when I began to cast
+about for a tactful way to preserve a few for Mabel. Seeing her chopping
+wood in the scorching sun I said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bet Mabel would like an
+orange just now. Shall I call her?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No&mdash;no&mdash;&rdquo; George grunted. &ldquo;Oranges heap bad for squaw,&rdquo; and
+speeding up his eating, he removed the last menace to Mabel.</p>
+<p>Once George told me of watching the sufferings of the Jayhawkers
+and Bennett-Arcane party:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Me little boy, first time I see white man. Whiskers make me think
+him devil. I run. I see some of Bennett party die. When all dead, we
+go down. First time Indians ever see flour. Squaws think it what make
+white men white and put it on their faces.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I asked George why he didn&rsquo;t go down and aid the whites. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+he asked, &ldquo;to get shot?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How many Shoshones are left?&rdquo; I asked George.</p>
+<p>He counted them on his fingers. &ldquo;Nineteen. Soon, none.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>George died in 1944 and it is safe I believe, to say that for 110
+years he had baffled every agency of death on America&rsquo;s worst desert.
+Because his ranch was a landmark and the water that came from the
+mountains was good, it was a natural stopping place and he was known
+to thousands. Following a curious custom of Indians George adopted
+the Swedish name Hansen because it had euphony he liked.</p>
+<p class="tb">The Panamint is the locale of the legend of Swamper Ike, first told
+I believe by Old Ranger over a nation-wide hookup, while he was M.C.
+of the program &ldquo;Death Valley Days.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A daring, but foolhardy youngster, with wife and baby, undertook
+to cross the range. Unacquainted with the country and scornful of its
+perils, he reached the crest, but there ran out of water. He left his wife
+and the baby on the trail, comfortably protected in the shade of a bluff
+and started down the Death Valley side of the range to find water.</p>
+<p>After a thorough search of the canyons about, he climbed to a
+higher level, scanned the floor of the valley. Seeing a lake that reflected
+the peaks of the Funeral Range he made for it under a withering sun.
+He learned too late that it was a mirage and exhausted, started back
+only to be beaten down and die.</p>
+<p>After waiting through a night of terror, the young mother prepared
+<span class="pb" id="Page_174">174</span>
+a comfortable place for her baby and went in search of her husband.
+She too saw the blue lake and made for it, saw it vanish as he had.
+Then she discovered his tracks and undertook to follow him, but she
+also was beaten down and fell dead within a few feet of his lifeless
+body.</p>
+<p>A band of wandering Cocopah Indians crossing the range, found
+the baby. They took the child to their own habitation on the Colorado
+river and named him Joe Salsuepuedes, which is Indian for &ldquo;Get-out-if-you-can.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Joe grew up as Indian, burned dark by the desert sun. But he had
+an idea he wasn&rsquo;t Indian. Learning that he was a foundling, picked up
+in the Panamint, he set out for Death Valley, possessed of a singular
+faith that somehow he would discover evidence that he was a white man.</p>
+<p>He obtained a job as swamper for the Borax Company. When he
+gave his name the boss said, &ldquo;Too many Joe&rsquo;s working here. We&rsquo;ll call
+you Ike.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Early Indians, as you may see in Dead Man&rsquo;s Canyon, the Valley of
+Fire, and numerous canyons in the western desert had a habit of scratching
+stories of adventure or signs to inform other Indians of unusual
+features of a locality on the canyon walls&mdash;often coloring the tracing
+with dyes from herbs or roots. Knowing this, Swamper Ike was always
+alert for these hieroglyphs on any boulder he passed or in any canyon
+he entered.</p>
+<p>One day Swamper Ike went out to look for a piece of onyx that he
+could polish and give to the girl he loved. While seeking the onyx he
+noticed a flat slab of travertine and on it the picture story of &ldquo;Get-out-if-you-can.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Swamper Ike had justified his faith.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_175">175</div>
+<h2 id="c27"><span class="small">Chapter XXV</span>
+<br />Ballarat. Ghost Town</h2>
+<p>In the early 1890&rsquo;s gold discovered on the west side of the Panamint
+in Pleasant Canyon caused the rush responsible for Ballarat. For more
+than 20 years the district had been combed by prospectors holed in at
+Post Office Spring, about one half mile south of the site upon which
+Ballarat was subsequently built. Here the government had a small
+army post and here soldiers, outlaws, and adventurers received their
+mail from a box wired in the crotch of a mesquite tree.</p>
+<p>The Radcliffe, which was the discovery mine was a profitable producer.
+The timbers and machinery were hauled from Randsburg over
+the Slate Range and across Panamint Valley, to the mouth of the
+canyon. There, under the direction of Oscar Rogers, it was packed on
+burros and taken up the steep grade to the mine site.</p>
+<p>Copperstain Joe, a noted half-breed Indian made the next strike.
+With a specimen, he went to Mojave where he showed it to Jim Cooper.
+For five dollars and a gallon of whiskey he led Cooper to the site.</p>
+<p>But his deal with Cooper interested me less than the cunning of his
+burro, Slick. Copperstain strode into a hardware store and asked for
+a lock. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s for Slick&rsquo;s chain. Picks a lock soon as I turn my back&mdash;dam&rsquo;
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The merchant showed him a lock of intricate mechanism, &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t
+pick this. Costs more, but worth it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care what it costs,&rdquo; Copperstain said and bought it. Later
+he looped the chain around the burro&rsquo;s feet, fastened the links with the
+lock and tethered Slick to a stake. &ldquo;That&rsquo;ll hold you&mdash;&rdquo; he said defiantly.</p>
+<p>The next morning he was back in the store, belligerent. &ldquo;Helluva
+lock you sold me. Slick picked it in no time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Impossible.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The burro&rsquo;s gone, ain&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; Copperstain bristled, and reaching
+<span class="pb" id="Page_176">176</span>
+into his pocket, produced the lock. &ldquo;See that nail in the keyhole? I
+didn&rsquo;t put it there. Slick just found a nail&mdash;that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The future of Pleasant Canyon seemed assured and it was decided
+to move the two saloons and grocery to the flats below, where a town
+would have room to grow.</p>
+<p>When citizens met to choose a name, George Riggins, a young
+Australian suggested the new town be given a name identified with gold
+the world over. Ballarat in his native country met the requirement and
+its name was adopted.</p>
+<p>Shorty Harris discovered The Star, The Elephant, the World Beater,
+The St. Patrick. In Tuba, Jail, Surprise, and Goler Canyons more strikes
+were made. It is curious that none were made in Happy Canyon.</p>
+<p>The production figures of early mines are rarely dependable and
+the yield is often confused with that obtained by swindlers from outright
+sale or stock promotion. My friend, Oscar Rogers, superintendent,
+told me the Radcliffe produced a net profit of approximately $500,000.
+Less authentic are figures attributed to the following:</p>
+<p>The O. B. Joyful in Tuba Canyon, $250,000; The Gem in Jail
+Canyon, $150,000; and Shorty Harris&rsquo; World Beater, $200,000.</p>
+<p>Among the noted of Ballarat residents was John LeMoyne, a
+Frenchman. He discovered a silver mine in Death Valley but the best
+service he gave the desert was a recipe for coffee. He walked into
+Ballarat one day and had lunch. The lady who owned the cafe asked
+if everything suited. &ldquo;All but the coffee,&rdquo; John said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How do you make your coffee?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Madame, there&rsquo;s no trick about making good coffee. Plenty coffee.
+Dam&rsquo; little water.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>From one end of Death Valley country to the other, coffee is judged
+by John LeMoyne&rsquo;s standard. You may not always get it, but mention
+it and the waiter will know.</p>
+<p>For years LeMoyne held his silver claim in spite of offers far beyond
+its value, which he believed was $5,000,000. But once when the
+urge to return to his beloved France was strong and Goldfield, Tonopah,
+and Rhyolite excited the nation, he weakened and decided to accept an
+offer said to have been $200,000. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he told the buyers, &ldquo;it must
+be cash.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After a huddle, John&rsquo;s demand was met and a check offered. John
+brushed it aside. &ldquo;But this eez not cash,&rdquo; he complained. No, he
+wouldn&rsquo;t go to town to get the cash. He had work to do. &ldquo;You get eet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Disgusted, the buyers left and John LeMoyne continued to wear
+his rags, eat his beans, and dream of La Belle France.</p>
+<p>A young Shoshone Indian came into Keeler excited as an Indian
+<span class="pb" id="Page_177">177</span>
+ever gets, looked up Shorty Harris and said: &ldquo;Short Man, your friend
+go out. No come back. Maybe him sick.&rdquo; It was midsummer, but
+LeMoyne had undertaken to reach his claim.</p>
+<p>In the bottom of the valley, Shorty identified LeMoyne&rsquo;s tracks by
+a peculiar hobnail which LeMoyne used in his shoes. He followed the
+tracks to Cottonwood Spring and there found an old French pistol
+which he knew had belonged to LeMoyne. Convinced he was on the
+right trail, he went on and after a mile or two met Death Valley Scotty.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know why you&rsquo;re here,&rdquo; Scotty said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just found his body.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>LeMoyne was partially eaten by coyotes and nearby were his dead
+burros. Though tethered to the mesquite with slender cotton cords
+which they could easily have broken, the patient asses had elected to
+die beside him.</p>
+<p>And there ended the dream of the glory trail back to the France
+he loved. Those who believe in the jinx will find something to sustain
+their faith in the record of John LeMoyne&rsquo;s mine.</p>
+<p>After LeMoyne&rsquo;s death, Wild Bill Corcoran who had made and
+lost fortunes in the lush days of Rhyolite, set out from Owens Valley
+to relocate it. Never a ranting prohibitionist, Bill believed that the best
+remedy for snake bite was likker in the blood when the snake bit. When
+he reached Darwin he was not feeling well and stopped long enough for
+a nip with friends and to get a youngster to drive his car and help at
+the camp.</p>
+<p>It was midsummer, with record temperature but Bill wanted John
+LeMoyne&rsquo;s mine. Becoming worse in the valley he stopped in Emigrant
+Canyon and sent the boy back for a doctor. Bill crawled into an old
+shack under the hill. When the boy and the doctor came, they found
+Bill Corcoran on the floor, his hand stretched toward a bottle of bootleg
+liquor. His soul had gone over the hill.</p>
+<p>One after another, five others followed Bill to file on LeMoyne&rsquo;s
+claim and each in turn joined Bill over the hill.</p>
+<p>LeMoyne&rsquo;s Christian name was Jean. His surname has been spelled
+both Lemoigne and Lemoine. The claim from which Indians had formerly
+taken lead was filed upon by LeMoyne in 1882.</p>
+<p>Joe Gorsline, a graduate of Columbia, with a background of wealth,
+came to Ballarat during the rush, looked over the town. &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t
+spend another day in this dump for all the gold in the mint,&rdquo; he announced.
+He had a few drinks, heard a few yarns, eyed a few girls in
+the honkies. It was all new to Joe, but something about the informalities
+of life appealed to him and in a little while he was renamed Joe Goose.</p>
+<p>Then the town&rsquo;s constable shot its Judge and Ballarat chose him to
+succeed the deceased. Not liking the laws of the code, he made a batch
+<span class="pb" id="Page_178">178</span>
+of his own, which were never questioned. While watching the flow of
+time and liquor, he &ldquo;went desert&rdquo; and put aside the things that might
+have been for the more alluring things-as-they-are.</p>
+<p>When Ballarat became a ghost town, Joe Gorsline took his body to
+the city, but his soul remained and years afterward when he died, a
+hearse came down the mountain and in it was Joe Gorsline, home again.
+He is buried in a little cemetery out on the flat and in the spring the
+golden sun cups, grow all around and you walk on them to get to his
+grave.</p>
+<p>Adding a cultural touch to Ballarat was an English nobleman who
+&ldquo;going desert&rdquo; tossed his title out of the window, donned overalls and
+brogans and promptly earned the approving verdict, &ldquo;An all right guy.&rdquo;
+Soon he was drinking with the toper and dancing with the demimonde.
+Like others, he did his own cooking and washing. He lived in a &rsquo;dobe
+cabin which, because it was on the main street, had its window shades
+always down.</p>
+<p>But there was one little custom of his British routine he never
+abandoned and this was discovered by accident. He stopped in John
+Lambert&rsquo;s saloon one evening before going to his cabin for dinner. He
+left his watch on the bar and had gone before Lambert noticed it. An
+hour later Lambert, having an opportunity to get away, took the watch
+to the cabin. John thus reported what he saw: &ldquo;He was eating his
+dinner and bigod&mdash;he had on a white shirt, wing collar, and swallow
+tail.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ballarat chuckled but no one suggested a lynching party. They
+knew how deep grow the roots in the soil one loves. &ldquo;Maybe,&rdquo; said
+Lambert, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s why John Bull always wins the last battle. They give
+up nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A familiar figure throughout Death Valley country was Johnny-Behind-the-Gun&mdash;small
+and wiry and as much a part of the land as the
+lizard. His moniker was acquired from his habit of settling disputes
+without cluttering up the courts. Johnny, whose name was Cyte, accounted
+for three or four sizable fortunes. Having sold a claim for
+$35,000 he once bought a saloon and gambling hall in Rhyolite, forswearing
+prospecting forever.</p>
+<p>Johnny advertised his whiskey by drinking it and the squareness of
+his game, by sitting in it. One night the gentleman opposite was overwhelmed
+with luck and his pockets bulged with $30,000 of Johnny&rsquo;s
+money. Having lost his last chip, Johnny said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll put up dis place.
+Ve play vun hand and quit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Johnny lost. He got up, reached for his hat. &ldquo;Vell, my lucky friend,
+<span class="pb" id="Page_179">179</span>
+I&rsquo;ll take a last drink mit you.&rdquo; He tossed the liquor, lighted a cigar.
+&ldquo;Goodnight, chentlemen,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I go find me anudder mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Johnny had several claims near the Keane Wonder in the Funeral
+Mountains, held by a sufferance not uncommon among old timers, who
+respected a notice regardless of legal formalities.</p>
+<p>Senator William M. Stewart, Nevada mining magnate, had employed
+Kyle Smith, a young mining engineer to go into the locality and
+see what he could find. Smith, a capable and likable chap, in working
+over the districts, located several claims open for filing by reason of
+Johnny&rsquo;s failure to do his assessment work.</p>
+<p>It is not altogether clear what happened between Johnny and Smith,
+but Smith&rsquo;s body was found after it had lain in the desert sun all day.
+There being no witnesses the only fact produced by sheriff and coroner
+was that Smith was dead. Johnny went free. Other escapades with
+Johnny-Behind-the-Gun occurred with such frequency that he was finally
+removed from the desert for awhile as the guest of the state.</p>
+<p>In a deal with Tom Kelly, Johnny was hesitant about signing some
+papers according to an understanding. His trigger quickness was explained
+to Kelly who was not impressed. He went to Johnny and asked
+him to sign up. Johnny refused. Kelly said calmly, &ldquo;Johnny, do you see
+that telephone pole?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I see. Vot about?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t sign, you&rsquo;re going to climb it.&rdquo; Johnny signed. He
+put his gun away when he acquired a lodging house at Beatty, where
+he died in 1944.</p>
+<p>Reminiscing one day in the old saloon he had owned, Chris Wichts
+slapped the bar: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve taken as much as $65,000 over this old bar in
+one month.&rdquo; He had none of it now but in a little cabin in Surprise
+Canyon with a stream running by his door, and a memory that retained
+only the laughs of his life, he didn&rsquo;t need $65,000.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A city fellow came into the cafe one day. Snooty sort. I told him
+we had some nice tender burro steaks. He flew off the handle. Said he
+wanted porterhouse or nothing. I served him. When he finished he
+apologized for being rude and said his porterhouse was good as he ever
+ate. I went into the kitchen and came back with a burro shank, shoved
+it in his face and said, &lsquo;Mister, you ate the meat off this burro leg.&rsquo; I
+thought he&rsquo;d murder me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>One day when Ballarat travel was heavy, a dapper passenger
+dropped off the stage, entered the saloon, bought a drink and paid for
+it with a $20 gold piece, getting $19.50 in change. When he&rsquo;d gone,
+Shorty Harris standing by said: &ldquo;Chris, that money doesn&rsquo;t sound right.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Chris examined it. The gold piece had been split, hollowed out and
+<span class="pb" id="Page_180">180</span>
+filled with alloy. Chris worried awhile, then brightened when he noticed
+his place was full of loafers playing solitaire; pulling at soggy pipes;
+waiting for a &ldquo;live one.&rdquo; &ldquo;Boys,&rdquo; said Chris, &ldquo;old Whiskers ain&rsquo;t getting
+much play. Let&rsquo;s go down and see him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Whiskers was his competitor down the street.</p>
+<p>A few moments later the bat-wing doors of Whiskers&rsquo; place flew
+open and Chris and his bums swarmed in. Chris laid an arm on the bar.
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;ll it be fellows?&rdquo; Then he turned to the loafers along the walk
+&ldquo;Line up, you guys and have a drink.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They did and when the drinks were downed, Chris laid the phony
+gold piece on the bar, received his change and with his crowd returned
+to his bar. An hour later he was still laughing to himself over the trick
+he&rsquo;d played on Whiskers when his own sawed-off doors flapped open
+and Whiskers barged in, followed by his own mob of moochers.
+Whiskers ordered for the house and laid down the $20. Chris gulped
+and gave the change.</p>
+<p>That coin circulated in every store and saloon in Ballarat for more
+than a year. Everybody knew it was phony, but accepted it without
+question and came to regard it with something akin to affection. Then
+one day a gentleman in spats came along and the $20 gold piece
+left forever.</p>
+<p>Billy Heider, a slim, genial fellow who had been a hat salesman in
+a smart toggery shop in Los Angeles came not for gold but to escape
+alimony. His easy smile masked a stubbornness that nothing could
+conquer. &ldquo;... she got a smart lawyer and dated the Judge,&rdquo; Billy said.</p>
+<p>He hung his bench-made suit on a peg, slipped into overalls, cut off
+one sleeve of his tuxedo to cover a canteen, spread the rest on the floor
+beside his bed to step on in the morning and so&mdash;transition. Eventually
+he began to prospect, kept at it for 20 years; found nothing, but he
+beat alimony.</p>
+<p>Usually mines were &ldquo;salted&rdquo; in shaft or tunnel to separate the
+sucker from his money, but it remained for a Ballarat woman to find a
+simpler way.</p>
+<p>Michael Sherlock, known as Sparkplug, because of continual trouble
+with that feature of his automobile, gave me her formula: &ldquo;She owned
+a claim in Pleasant Canyon that had a showing of gold. She wanted
+$10,000 for it. A rich auto dealer came along to look at it. He was
+worth at least $5,000,000. She told him to take his mining engineer
+and get his own samples and when he got back she&rsquo;d have a chicken
+dinner waiting.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They got the samples, came down, parked the car in front of her
+house, got their bellies full of chicken and went back to the city. A
+<span class="pb" id="Page_181">181</span>
+couple of days later the millionaire was back. Couldn&rsquo;t get his money
+into her hands quick enough. Word went out there would be work
+enough for all comers and we figured on boom times. But he couldn&rsquo;t
+find ore to match her samples.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What happened?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;While he was eating chicken dinner that night, her Indian hired
+man went out to his auto and switched samples.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I asked Sparkplug why he didn&rsquo;t sue her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you had $5,000,000 would you want the whole dam&rsquo; state
+laughing at you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="tb">Randsburg, which boomed in the early Eighties as a result of gold
+strikes in the Yellow Aster, the King Solomon, and later the Kelly silver
+mine, soon became one of the principal eastern gateways to the Panamint
+and to Death Valley by way of Granite Wells and Wingate Pass.</p>
+<p>A curious story of a man haunted by his conscience is that of
+William Dooley and told to me by Dr. Samuel Slocum, who had come
+to Randsburg from Arizona after making a fortune in gold.</p>
+<p>A howling blizzard had driven everyone from the streets and the
+campers in Fiddlers&rsquo; Gulch into Billy Hevron&rsquo;s saloon. Dr. Slocum, lost
+in the blinding snow and stumbling along the street, felt with his hands
+for walls he couldn&rsquo;t see, while a barroom noise guided him to the door.</p>
+<p>At the bar he saw William Paddock, mining engineer. &ldquo;Bill, you&rsquo;re
+the man I&rsquo;m looking for. I can&rsquo;t find anyone who can tell me how to
+get to Goler Canyon in Panamint Valley. You&rsquo;ve been there and I
+want you to draw me a map.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Paddock, finishing a drink ordered one for Slocum and introduced
+him to a man at his side: &ldquo;This is Mr. Dooley,&rdquo; Paddock said, and the
+doctor saw a great hulk of a man with black whiskers, small eyes, and
+an uneasy look. Before a word was spoken Slocum sensed Dooley&rsquo;s
+instant dislike of him.</p>
+<p>Slocum ordered a round of drinks. Dooley refused and walked to
+the farther end of the bar.</p>
+<p>Paddock followed Dooley after a moment, talked with him and
+returned to his drink. He said to Slocum: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in a curious situation.
+I don&rsquo;t know much about Dooley, but down in Mexico he saved my
+life. Now it&rsquo;s my turn to save his. He just killed a man in Arizona and
+came here to hide out. I&rsquo;m taking him to Goler Canyon soon as this
+blizzard is over. He thinks you are a deputy U. S. Marshal and claims
+that he has seen you before and that you are no doctor.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He may have seen me in Arizona at Gold Hill,&rdquo; Slocum said.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_182">182</div>
+<p>&ldquo;The best way I can help you,&rdquo; Paddock continued, &ldquo;is to sign the
+road as I go and after a day or two you can follow us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On the day following Paddock&rsquo;s departure Doctor Slocum set out.
+The next day he came upon a newly-made grave, outlined with stone.
+On a redwood board used for the marker was carved this inscription:</p>
+<p class="center"><i>&ldquo;Here lies Bill Dooley who died by giving Wm. Paddock the dam&rsquo; lie.&rdquo;</i></p>
+<p>With no reason to shed tears, the Doctor following Paddock&rsquo;s signs,
+reached Goler Canyon, made camp and knowing that Paddock intended
+to occupy a stone cabin farther up the gulch, he started up the
+trail. He&rsquo;d gone only a short distance when he saw Paddock approaching,
+waving his arms in a signal for Slocum to go back. The Doctor
+stopped.</p>
+<p>When Paddock came down he said, &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, Doc, get back
+to your camp. Dooley is behind that big boulder above us with a
+Winchester trained on you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, I thought he was dead....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; Paddock smiled grimly. &ldquo;He worked all night digging that
+grave. Said it would throw you off his trail. I can&rsquo;t get it out of his
+head you&rsquo;re a marshal.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Slocum had made a gruelling trip to free and open country and he
+had no intention of being driven out. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go up and talk to him,&rdquo; he
+said. Paddock warned him that it would be useless and might be fatal,
+but Slocum insisted and they went up the trail, Paddock going in front
+to shield him.</p>
+<p>Dooley was outside the cabin with a rifle in the crook of his arm,
+his finger on the trigger.</p>
+<p>Slocum was unarmed. He calmly assured Dooley he was not an
+officer; that he had no intention of disclosing Dooley&rsquo;s whereabouts,
+&ldquo;But this is free country and I intend to stay.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dooley&rsquo;s reaction was a noncommittal grunt. However, violence
+was avoided. When the Doctor returned to his camp, Paddock decided it
+would be best to accompany him as a measure of safety. Explaining
+to Dooley that he would remain with the Doctor to inspect a claim, he
+remained as a body-guard for three days. On the fourth he went up to
+the stone cabin and discovered Dooley had loaded his wagon with all
+the camp equipment and supplies, including a green water keg and left
+for parts unknown.</p>
+<p>Just across the range was Hungry Bill&rsquo;s country. A year or so
+afterward Doctor Slocum, crossing the mountains into Death Valley,
+stopped at Hungry Bill&rsquo;s Six Spring Canyon Ranch and noticed a green
+<span class="pb" id="Page_183">183</span>
+cask. Hungry Bill said that he had found the keg floating on the ooze
+near Badwater. &ldquo;Somewhere under that ooze,&rdquo; Doctor Slocum said, &ldquo;lies
+Bill Dooley, his team, his wagon, and its load.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="tb">An interesting character of this area was Toppy Johnson, who
+scouted for Senator George Hearst and later had charge of copper claims
+belonging to William Randolph Hearst, near Granite Wells.</p>
+<p>While there, Toppy employed Aunt Liza, a negro cook. Aunt Liza
+came from Randsburg with an enormous trunk. She was a good cook,
+but an awful thief and nearly everything Toppy owned except the furniture
+disappeared piece by piece. When his razor vanished he looked
+through the trunk and found the loot. He didn&rsquo;t want to lose Aunt Liza,
+so he removed a few of the more needed things, leaving the rest to be
+recovered by instalments. Thereafter it was a game of losing and
+retrieving.</p>
+<p>As strange a coincidence as I&rsquo;ve ever heard attended the end of
+Toppy Johnson. Sent to Mexico when Pancho Villa was overrunning
+the country, he fled to Mazatlan when Pancho announced he would
+shoot on sight both native and foreigners who were not in sympathy
+with his marauding.</p>
+<p>All boats were crowded with refugees, both native and alien, but
+Toppy was permitted to join the hundreds willing to sleep on deck.
+Toppy unwittingly chose a spot over the saloon where drunken celebrants
+soon began shooting at the ceiling.</p>
+<p>A shot penetrated the flooring of the craft&rsquo;s deck and Toppy&rsquo;s
+abdomen. An American physician sleeping alongside was awakened by
+Toppy&rsquo;s groans, attended him, but saw there was no hope. The physician
+asked his name, the object being to notify the victim&rsquo;s relatives.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If my doctor were only here,&rdquo; Toppy moaned, &ldquo;he could save me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who is your doctor?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dr. Samuel Slocum, of Pasadena,&rdquo; Toppy said, and died.</p>
+<p>The physician was Dr. Slocum&rsquo;s nephew.</p>
+<p>Thirty-four miles south of Ballarat at the end of a narrow canyon
+leading from Wingate Pass road into Death Valley, one comes upon
+a breath-taking riot of color. Pink hills. Blue hills. Hills of dazzling
+white, mottled with black and green. Yellow hills. Maroon and jade
+hills.</p>
+<p>A gentleman of fine fancy and fluent tongue passed that way,
+learned that under the hills was a deposit of epsom salts. Then he went
+to Hollywood where salts met money. He talked convincingly of nature&rsquo;s
+drug store. &ldquo;Just sink a shovel into the ground and up comes two
+<span class="pb" id="Page_184">184</span>
+dollars&rsquo; worth of medicine recommended by every doctor in the country.
+No educating the public. Everybody knows epsom salts.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was no flaw in that argument and Hollywood dipped into its
+pockets. A mono rail was strung from Searles&rsquo; Lake over the Slate Range
+through Wingate Pass and up the slopes to the pink hills. There rose
+Epsom City. For awhile the balanced cars scooted along that gleaming
+rail, bearing salts to market&mdash;dreams of wealth to Hollywood.</p>
+<p>But the world had enough salts, Epsom City failed. Nothing is left
+to remind one of the incredible folly but a few boards and a pile of
+bones. The bones are those of wild burros slaughtered by vandals who
+in a project as inhuman as ever excited lust for money, went through
+the country and killed the helpless animals, to be sold to manufacturers
+of chicken and dog food.</p>
+<p>A singular character known as Dad Smith, who had come to California
+with John C. Fremont was one of the earliest settlers at Post
+Office Springs. Smith had been a scout with Kit Carson in the Apache
+wars in Arizona and returned to the lower Panamint in 1860, to hunt
+gold in Butte Valley, where, nearing 90 he dug a tunnel 100 feet in
+length. Found there delirious, with pneumonia, by Dr. Samuel Slocum,
+he was removed to the Doctor&rsquo;s camp where Mrs. Slocum nursed him
+through his convalescence. When he recovered he decided to give Mrs.
+Slocum a token of his gratitude.</p>
+<p>At the time, Barstow and Daggett were the most convenient stations
+for prospectors in the southerly area. At Daggett they likkered at Mother
+Featherlegs&rsquo;. At Barstow they bought at Judge Gooding&rsquo;s store or at
+Aunt Hannah&rsquo;s, and drank at Sloan and Hart&rsquo;s saloon. Dad&rsquo;s money,
+as was that of others, was left with them for safe keeping. So he walked
+every mile of a ten days&rsquo; round trip to get a box of chocolates for Mrs.
+Slocum. A little chore like that made no difference to Dad. He encountered
+a desert rain and arrived at the Slocum cabin drenched. They
+persuaded him to remain overnight and led him to a tent.</p>
+<p>Seeing that water dripped from Dad&rsquo;s blankets, Dr. Slocum went
+for dry bedding. When he returned, Dad had his own bedding spread
+on the ground. &ldquo;Here, Dad&mdash;take this dry bedding....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not on your life,&rdquo; Dad said as he crawled into his own. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d catch
+cold, sure as hell.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Two noted athletes of the period went into the Panamint for a vacation.
+When they asked for a guide, they were told to get Dad, but after
+looking him over they decided he lacked stamina, but engaged him
+when they could find no one else. The route was over the Panamint
+into Death Valley and back through Redlands Canyon&mdash;a trip to test
+the hardiest.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_185">185</div>
+<p>On the third day Dad returned alone. Asked about his companions,
+he grumbled: &ldquo;They&rsquo;re down and out. Now I&rsquo;ve got to haul &rsquo;em in.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He took his burros, lashed the victims securely on the beasts and
+brought them in.</p>
+<p>Remembered by oldsters, was Archie McDermot, a big fellow of
+unbelievable strength who was an all-purpose employee of Dr. Slocum.</p>
+<p>While they were camped at Barstow one night, Archie went up town
+to pass a cheerful hour and during the course of the evening a brawl
+started and Archie suddenly found himself the object of a mass attack
+by five burly miners. Archie knocked them down as they came, threw
+them out and returned to his drinking. The constable went in to take
+Archie. Archie tossed him through the door. The officer didn&rsquo;t want to
+kill him, and collecting a posse of four brawny helpers, tried again.
+Archie pitched them out.</p>
+<p>Being a friend of Slocum, the constable now went to see the Doctor.
+&ldquo;Doc, can&rsquo;t you come down and do something about Archie? Knowing
+how you need him, I don&rsquo;t want to kill him....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Doctor Slocum went, discovered that Archie, after throwing everybody
+out of the place, had seized the long heavy bar, turned it on its
+side and was sitting on the edge with a bottle in each hand. Doctor
+Slocum regarded the wreckage and then Archie. &ldquo;Good Lord, Archie,
+what have you done?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing, Doc,&rdquo; Archie said. &ldquo;Just having a nip. Take one on the
+house....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What about this fight?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fight?&rdquo; repeated Archie. &ldquo;Oh, that&mdash;some fellows tried to start
+a little ruckus but I didn&rsquo;t pay much attention to it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But if Archie had no fear of a dozen live men, he was terrorized
+by a dead one.</p>
+<p>Doctor and Mrs. Slocum, with Archie, were leaving their camp in
+the Panamint. The thermometer under the canopy of the vehicle registered
+135 degrees&mdash;hot for an April day, even in Death Valley country.
+As they drove along, the Doctor noticed some clothing on a bush.
+&ldquo;Seems strange,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s look around.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Archie skirmished through the bushes. Presently he returned, his
+face white, horror in his eyes. He grabbed the wagon wheel, his quivering
+bulk shaking the heavily loaded vehicle. &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, Doc.
+Go and look!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Doctor saw a sight as pitiable as it is ever man&rsquo;s lot to see&mdash;a
+young fellow dying from thirst on the desert. His protruding tongue
+split in the middle. Unable to speak, though retaining a spark of life.
+The fingers of both hands worn to stubs.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_186">186</div>
+<p>Kneeling, Doctor Slocum asked the victim where he came from;
+where he wished to go. No sign came from the staring eyes. Finally
+the Doctor said, &ldquo;We want to help you. We have water. We&rsquo;re going
+to take you home.&rdquo; At the mention of home, a feeble smile came, and
+two tears, the last two drops in that wasted body, rolled down his
+cheeks and dried in the desert sun and then he died. There was nothing
+to do but bury the body.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have to help me, Archie,&rdquo; the Doctor said.</p>
+<p>A look of terror came into Archie&rsquo;s eyes. &ldquo;Doc,&rdquo; he pleaded, &ldquo;ask
+me anything but that....&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The man who&rsquo;d cleaned up Barstow, quailed in superstitious fear at
+the thought of touching the dead.</p>
+<p>They looked around for a place to dig a grave. But the country was
+covered with malpai and lava rock and they couldn&rsquo;t dig in it. The
+Doctor wrapped the body in a piece of canvas and Mrs. Slocum aided in
+lifting it into the wagon. She drove the team while the Doctor and
+Archie walked along, looking for loose earth and finally found a spot.
+Archie dug the grave. The Doctor lowered the body and Archie with
+shut eyes, filled the grave.</p>
+<p>A press story of the finding brought a flood of letters from all parts
+of the country. Such stories always do. From mothers, wives, sweethearts&mdash;but
+none from men. It&rsquo;s always the woman who cares.</p>
+<p>Such deaths are due to inexperience. This boy had no canteen. Just
+around the corner of a jutting hill was Lone Willow Spring.</p>
+<p>Though scarcely a vestige remains, there was once a town at Lone
+Willow. Saloons and an enormous dance hall lured the Bad Boys and
+there the trail ended for scores reported as missing men.</p>
+<p>Cyclone Wilson, a nephew of Shady Myrick who built a sizable
+export trade in gem stones, and for whom Myrick Springs is named,
+was taking a wagon load of Chinese coolies to work at Old Harmony.
+All Chinamen looked alike to Cyclone and he didn&rsquo;t know that these
+were newcomers. It was his custom to discharge his passengers at the
+foot of a steep hill near Lone Willow and require them to walk to the
+top.</p>
+<p>As usual, upon reaching this grade he set his brakes and waited
+for the coolies to get out. None moved, then he ordered them out. The
+Chinamen sat in stony silence. He repeated the order with no result
+other than jabber among themselves. Angered, Cyclone reached for his
+long blacksnake whip. It had a &ldquo;cracker&rdquo; on the end of which was a
+buckshot. With unerring accuracy he aimed the whip at the nearest
+coolie and overboard he went. The others leaped out and drawing
+knives from their big loose sleeves, massed for assault.</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_187">187</div>
+<p>Cyclone reached for a pistol&mdash;always carried on the wagon seat,
+and started shooting. His toll was five Chinamen.</p>
+<p>The cause of the murders, it was later learned, was due entirely to
+the fact that none of the Chinamen had understood a word Cyclone
+had spoken.</p>
+<p>A Chinaman at Lone Willow, who spoke English made his countrymen
+bury the dead.</p>
+<p class="tb">Today Ballarat is a ghost town and soon every trace of it will be
+gone. Roofless walls lift like prayerful arms to gods that are deaf.</p>
+<p>In the late afternoon when the shadows of the Argus Range have
+crept across the valley, a few old timers come out of leaning dobes and
+stand bareheaded to look about. The afterglow of a sun is upon the
+peaks and the afterglow of dreams in their hearts. They people the
+empty streets with men long dead, some in unmarked graves in the
+little cemetery on the flat just beyond the town. Some on the trails,
+God only knows where. These dead they see pass in and out of the
+old saloons. These dead they hear again. Glasses tinkle, slippered feet
+dance again.</p>
+<p>Tomorrow? Their pale eyes lift to the canyons and though dimmed
+a little, they see one hundred billion dollars.</p>
+<p class="tb">What of Shoshone? It remains with changes of course. The shanties
+hauled from Greenwater have been hauled somewhere else. No longer
+do I step from my car as I have so often and call to those on the bench.
+&ldquo;Move over, fellows&rdquo; and hear their familiar greeting: &ldquo;Where the hell
+<i>you</i> been?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Instead, I drive to an air conditioned cabin and stroll back to the
+former site of the bench, so long the social center. There I see a sign
+over a door which reads, &ldquo;Crowbar&rdquo; and I enter a dreamy cavern with
+dimmed, rosy lights, hear the music of ice against glass and refuse to
+believe the startling sight of an honest-to-goodness old timer tending
+bar in a clean white shirt.</p>
+<p>Likewise I balk at the white lines I walk between as I cross the
+asphalt road to the store.</p>
+<p>But above Shoshone the same blue skies stretch without end over
+a world apart, and under them are the same uncrowded trails; the same
+far horizons for the vagabond&rsquo;s foot and the peace &ldquo;which passeth all
+understanding.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="pb" id="Page_189">189</div>
+<h2 id="c28"><span class="small">INDEX</span></h2>
+<p class="center"><a href="#index_A" class="ab">A</a> <a href="#index_B" class="ab">B</a> <a href="#index_C" class="ab">C</a> <a href="#index_D" class="ab">D</a> <a href="#index_E" class="ab">E</a> <a href="#index_F" class="ab">F</a> <a href="#index_G" class="ab">G</a> <a href="#index_H" class="ab">H</a> <a href="#index_I" class="ab">I</a> <a href="#index_J" class="ab">J</a> <a href="#index_K" class="ab">K</a> <a href="#index_L" class="ab">L</a> <a href="#index_M" class="ab">M</a> <a href="#index_N" class="ab">N</a> <a href="#index_O" class="ab">O</a> <a href="#index_P" class="ab">P</a> <span class="ab">Q</span> <a href="#index_R" class="ab">R</a> <a href="#index_S" class="ab">S</a> <a href="#index_T" class="ab">T</a> <span class="ab">U</span> <a href="#index_V" class="ab">V</a> <a href="#index_W" class="ab">W</a> <span class="ab">X</span> <a href="#index_Y" class="ab">Y</a> <span class="ab">Z</span></p>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_A"><b>A</b></dt>
+<dt>Amargosa River, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></dt>
+<dt>American Potash and Chemical Co., <a href="#Page_33">33</a></dt>
+<dt>Archilette Spring, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></dt>
+<dt>Augerreberry, Pete, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_B"><b>B</b></dt>
+<dt>Ballarat, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></dt>
+<dt>Ballarat Mines, production figures, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></dt>
+<dt>Beatty, Monte, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></dt>
+<dt>Benson, Myra, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>-134-135</dt>
+<dt>Benson, Jack, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>-134-135</dt>
+<dt>Bennett, Bellerin&rsquo; Teck, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></dt>
+<dt>Bennett, Charles, freighter, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></dt>
+<dt>Bennett&rsquo;s Well, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></dt>
+<dt>Black Mountain, story of, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-61</dt>
+<dt>Bodie, toughest of the Gold Towns, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></dt>
+<dt>Borax, discovery of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></dt>
+<dt>Bradbury Well, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></dt>
+<dt>Bowers, Sandy, gets a fortune for a board bill, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></dt>
+<dt>Brannan, Sam, Mormon leader, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></dt>
+<dt>Brandt, &ldquo;Arkansas&rdquo; Ben, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></dt>
+<dt>Breyfogle, Jacob; stories of, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></dt>
+<dt>Brown, Charles, Deputy Sheriff at Greenwater; store at Shoshone; road builder, supervisor, superintendent of Lila C. Mine at Dale; elected to senate; <a href="#c17">Chap. XV</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></dt>
+<dt>Brown (nee Fairbanks) Stella, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>-105, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></dt>
+<dt>Brougher Wils, at Tonopah, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></dt>
+<dt>Bruce, Jimmy, private graveyard, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></dt>
+<dt>Bullfrog Mine, discovered, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>-54-55</dt>
+<dt>Butler, James, discoverer of Tonopah silver, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>-49-50, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></dt>
+<dt>Bulette, Julia, famed madam of Virginia City, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_C"><b>C</b></dt>
+<dt>Cahill, Washington, Borax Co. official, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>-36</dt>
+<dt>Calico Mountains, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></dt>
+<dt>Calico, stories of, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></dt>
+<dt>Carrillo, Jose Antonio, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></dt>
+<dt>Carson, Kit, guide and scout in Shoshone country, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>-94-95</dt>
+<dt>Casey, John &ldquo;Cranky,&rdquo; noted desert character, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>-138</dt>
+<dt>Cave Spring, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></dt>
+<dt>Cazaurang, Jean, wealthy miser, death of, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>-101</dt>
+<dt>China Ranch, stories of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></dt>
+<dt>Clark, W. A., <a href="#Page_60">60</a></dt>
+<dt>Clark, &ldquo;Patsy,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_60">60</a></dt>
+<dt>Coleman, W. T., <a href="#Page_27">27</a>-28, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></dt>
+<dt>Comstock, &ldquo;Pancake,&rdquo; famous lode named for; buys a woman; suicide, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></dt>
+<dt>Corcoran, &ldquo;Wild Bill,&rdquo; famous prospector; death of, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></dt>
+<dt>Counterfeit gold piece, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-180</dt>
+<dt>Cross, Ed, partner and co-discoverer of Bullfrog Mine, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_D"><b>D</b></dt>
+<dt>Dayton, James, superintendent Furnace Creek Ranch, death of, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>-36, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></dt>
+<dt>Dante&rsquo;s View, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></dt>
+<dt>Davis, Buford, buys Noonday Mine; death of, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></dt>
+<dt>Death Valley, cause of; history of, geology, temperatures; first settlers, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></dt>
+<dt>Decker, Judge, convivial Ballarat Justice of Peace, murdered, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></dt>
+<dt>Delameter, John, early freighter, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></dt>
+<dt>Diamond Tooth Lil, glamorous madam, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-63</dt>
+<dt>Dooley, William, bad man, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>-182-183</dt>
+<dt>Driscoll, Dan, partner of Shorty Harris, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></dt>
+<dt>Dublin Gulch, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></dt>
+<dt>Dumont, Eleanor, (Madame Moustache), charmer of the Forty Niners, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_E"><b>E</b></dt>
+<dt>Eichbaum, Bob, toll road, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></dt>
+<dt>Egbert, Adrian, at Cave Spring, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></dt>
+<dt>Epsom City, salts deposit; mono rail, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_F"><b>F</b></dt>
+<dt>Fairbanks, Ralph Jacobus, at Ash Meadows; at Greenwater; at Shoshone, stories of; death; <a href="#c18">Ch. XVI</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>-105, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-111</dt>
+<dt>Fairbanks, Celestia Abigail, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></dt>
+<dt>Fennimore, James, &ldquo;Old Virginny&rdquo;; named Virginia City; swapped Ophir Mine for blind pony, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></dt>
+<dt>Flake, Sam, old timer, poker student, death, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></dt>
+<dt>Fremont, John C., <a href="#Page_93">93</a></dt>
+<dt>French, Dr. Darwin, seeks Lost Gunsight, names Darwin Falls and town of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></dt>
+<dt>Funston, General Frederick, identifies and names Death Valley flora, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_G"><b>G</b></dt>
+<dt>Gayhart, W. C., assayer, part owner of Tonopah Discovery Mine, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>-50</dt>
+<dt>George, &ldquo;Rocky Mountain,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_76">76</a></dt>
+<dt>Godey, Alex, Fremont scout, fights Indians at Resting Springs, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></dt>
+<dt class="pb" id="Page_190">190</dt>
+<dt>Goldfield, named, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></dt>
+<dt>Goodwin, Ray, park official, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></dt>
+<dt>Gorsline, Joe, Ballarat Judge, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-178</dt>
+<dt>Gower, Harry, Borax Co. official, mgr. Furnace Creek Ranch, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></dt>
+<dt>Grandpa Springs, hole-in for old time prospectors, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></dt>
+<dt>Grantham, Louise, girl prospector, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></dt>
+<dt>Gray, Fred, Ballarat prospector, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></dt>
+<dt>Gray, W. B., <a href="#Page_77">77</a></dt>
+<dt>Greenwater, copper strike, stories of, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></dt>
+<dt>Gunsight Mine, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-22, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>-158</dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_H"><b>H</b></dt>
+<dt>&ldquo;Happy Bandits&rdquo; (Small and McDonald), <a href="#Page_164">164</a>-165, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-168</dt>
+<dt>Harris, Frank &ldquo;Shorty,&rdquo; <a href="#c19">Ch. XVII</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></dt>
+<dt>Harrisburg, scene of gold strike, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></dt>
+<dt>Harmon, Pete, misses millions, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></dt>
+<dt>Hellgate Pass, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></dt>
+<dt>Heider, Billy, flees alimony, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></dt>
+<dt>Heinze, August, Copper King, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></dt>
+<dt>Henderson, W. T., names Telescope Peak, kills Joaquin Murietta, famous bandit, and pickles head; sees victim&rsquo;s ghost, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>-165</dt>
+<dt>Hilton, Frank, finds body of James Dayton, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></dt>
+<dt>Hoagland George, burial of, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>-73</dt>
+<dt>Holmes, Helen, story of thriller, &ldquo;Perils of Pauline,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_127">127</a></dt>
+<dt>Hungry Hattie, Ballarat character, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></dt>
+<dt>Huhn, Ernest (Siberian Red), diligent prospector, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></dt>
+<dt>Hungry Bill, Panamint chief, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></dt>
+<dt>Hunt, Capt. Jefferson, Mormon guide; prominent in California culture, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_I"><b>I</b></dt>
+<dt>Ickes, Harold, visits Shoshone, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>-150</dt>
+<dt>Indians of the desert, conflicting opinions of, <a href="#c9">Ch. VII</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></dt>
+<dt>Indian George Hansen, owner of Indian Ranch, discovered silver at Panamint City, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>-172-173</dt>
+<dt>Ishmael, George, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_J"><b>J</b></dt>
+<dt>Johnnie Mine, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></dt>
+<dt>Johnson, Albert, owner and builder of Scotty&rsquo;s Castle, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></dt>
+<dt>Johnson, Bob, tamps friend&rsquo;s grave, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>-73</dt>
+<dt>Johnson, Toppy, supt. of desert mine of W. R. Hearst, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></dt>
+<dt>Jones, Herman, discovered Red Wing Mine, road builder, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></dt>
+<dt>Jones, J. P., Nev. silver king at Panamint city, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></dt>
+<dt>Johnny-Behind-the-Gun, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>-179</dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_K"><b>K</b></dt>
+<dt>Kellogg, Lois, owner of Manse Ranch, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></dt>
+<dt>Kempfer, Don, mining engineer, official of Sierra Talc. Co., <a href="#Page_158">158</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_L"><b>L</b></dt>
+<dt>Lee, Philander, owner of Resting Springs Ranch, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></dt>
+<dt>Lee, Cub, built first house at Shoshone, slays wife and son, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></dt>
+<dt>Lee, John D., established Lee&rsquo;s Ferry; executed for massacre of emigrants at Mountain Meadows, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></dt>
+<dt>Lee, &ldquo;Shoemaker,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_98">98</a></dt>
+<dt>Legend of Swamper Ike, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>-174</dt>
+<dt>Le Moyne, Jean, recipe for coffee, story of mine, death, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>-177</dt>
+<dt>Lone Willow, murders at, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></dt>
+<dt>Longstreet, Jack, Ash Meadows bad man, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></dt>
+<dt>Lost Mines, all of <a href="#c24">Ch. XXII</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>-163</dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_M"><b>M</b></dt>
+<dt>Main, Eddie, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></dt>
+<dt>McDermot, Archie, Strong Man, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></dt>
+<dt>McGarn, &ldquo;Whitey Bill,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></dt>
+<dt>Manly, William Lewis, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></dt>
+<dt>Manse Ranch, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></dt>
+<dt>Metbury Spring, first name of Shoshone, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></dt>
+<dt>Myers, Al, discoverer of Gold Field, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></dt>
+<dt>Modine, Dan, deputy sheriff, early owner of China Ranch, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></dt>
+<dt>Montgomery, Bob, owner of Montgomery Shoshone Mine, buys Skidoo discovery claim on sight, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>-56</dt>
+<dt>Murray, Billy, saves John S. Cook Bank and Goldfield from &ldquo;run,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_51">51</a></dt>
+<dt>Murietta, Joaquin, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></dt>
+<dt>Myrick, Shady, exports gem stones, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_N"><b>N</b></dt>
+<dt>Nadeau, Remi, genius of transportation, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></dt>
+<dt>Nagle, Dave, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></dt>
+<dt>Naylor, George, sheriff, treasurer, supervisor of Inyo Co., <a href="#Page_102">102</a></dt>
+<dt>Nels, Dobe Charlie, at Bodie; at Shoshone, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-75</dt>
+<dt>Noble, Levi, geologist, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>-40-41</dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_O"><b>O</b></dt>
+<dt>Oakes, Sir Harry; in Alaska; at Greenwater; at Shoshone; makes strike in Canada; builds palace at Niagara Falls; knighted by King George V; slain by son-in-law, it is said&mdash;a renegade French count, in Bahamas, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>-112</dt>
+<dt>Oddie, Tasker, mining tycoon, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>-50, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></dt>
+<dt>Owens Valley, rape of, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>-148</dt>
+<dt class="pb" id="Page_191">191</dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_P"><b>P</b></dt>
+<dt>Pacific Coast Borax Co., organized, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>-29</dt>
+<dt>Pahrump Ranch, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></dt>
+<dt>Panamint City, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-167-168</dt>
+<dt>Panamint Tom, story of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></dt>
+<dt>Perry, J. W. S., supt. Borax Co., designer of 20 mule team wagons, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></dt>
+<dt>Pietsch, Henry, shot Ballarat judge, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></dt>
+<dt>Plato, Joe, on the Comstock Lode, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></dt>
+<dt>Post Office Spring, early army post, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_R"><b>R</b></dt>
+<dt>Radcliffe Mine, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></dt>
+<dt>Raines, E. P., genial crook, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-166</dt>
+<dt>Randsburg, gold discovered at, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></dt>
+<dt>Rasor, Clarence, Borax Co. official, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></dt>
+<dt>Resting Springs, named by Mormons, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></dt>
+<dt>Rich, Charles, Mormon pioneer, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></dt>
+<dt>Rickard, sports promoter, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></dt>
+<dt>&ldquo;Rocky Mountain&rdquo; George, prospector, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></dt>
+<dt>Rogers, John, Bennett-Arcane party, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></dt>
+<dt>Rosie, squaw, love life of, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></dt>
+<dt>Ryan, Joe, desert philosopher, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>-71, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></dt>
+<dt>Rhyolite, discovery of gold, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>-55</dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_S"><b>S</b></dt>
+<dt>Saratoga Springs, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></dt>
+<dt>Schwab, Charles M., at Rhyolite; at Greenwater, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></dt>
+<dt>Scott, Bob, discoverer of Confidence Mine, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></dt>
+<dt>Scott, Mary, squaw, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></dt>
+<dt>Scott, Walter, &ldquo;Death Valley Scotty,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#c21">Ch. XIX</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></dt>
+<dt>Scrugham, James, Governor and U.S. Senator of Nevada, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></dt>
+<dt>Searles, John, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>-33, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></dt>
+<dt>Sherlock, Michael, &ldquo;Sparkplug,&rdquo; <a href="#Page_180">180</a></dt>
+<dt>Skidoo, gold strike, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>-56</dt>
+<dt>Slim, Death Valley, bad man, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>-103</dt>
+<dt>Slim, Jackass, <a href="#c4">Ch. II</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>; <a href="#c13">Ch. XI</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>-65</dt>
+<dt>Slocum, Dr. Samuel, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>-186</dt>
+<dt>Smith, Francis M. (&ldquo;Borax Smith&rdquo;), <a href="#Page_29">29</a>-33, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></dt>
+<dt>Smith, &ldquo;Dad,&rdquo; Old Man of the Mountains; came with Kit Carson, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></dt>
+<dt>Smith, Pegleg, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>-98-99</dt>
+<dt>Snake House, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></dt>
+<dt>Sorrells, Maury, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></dt>
+<dt>Stewart, Wm. R., Nevada Senator, mines at Panamint City, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></dt>
+<dt>Stiles, Ed, first driver of 20 mule team, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></dt>
+<dt>Stump Springs, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></dt>
+<dt>Stovepipe Wells, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_T"><b>T</b></dt>
+<dt>Teck, Bellowin&rsquo;, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></dt>
+<dt>Tecopa Cap, Indian Chief, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></dt>
+<dt>Tecopa Hot Spring, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></dt>
+<dt>Tecopa, John, discoverer of Johnnie Mine, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></dt>
+<dt>Telescope Peak, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></dt>
+<dt>Temperature in Death Valley, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></dt>
+<dt>Tonopah, discovery of silver, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></dt>
+<dt>Towne&rsquo;s Pass, named, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></dt>
+<dt>Trona, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></dt>
+<dt>Twenty-mule team, first driver, design of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></dt>
+<dt>Tule Hole, story of, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>-37</dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_V"><b>V</b></dt>
+<dt>Vasquez, Tiburcio, bandit terror, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></dt>
+<dt>Volmer, Joe, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_W"><b>W</b></dt>
+<dt>Wagons, <a href="#Page_20">20</a> mule team, design of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></dt>
+<dt>Wamack, Bob, at Confidence Mine, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></dt>
+<dt>Weed, Tom, noted Indian, death of, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-90</dt>
+<dt>Wichts, Chris, noted Ballarat character, story of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></dt>
+<dt>Williams, George, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></dt>
+<dt>Williams, Bill, preacher and plunderer, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-97</dt>
+<dt>Wilson, Cyclone, massacre of Chinamen at Lone Willow, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></dt>
+<dt>Wingfield, George, famous gambler, luck of, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></dt>
+<dt>Winters, Aaron and Rosie, discovered borax in Death Valley, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></dt>
+<dt>Wolfskill, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl class="index">
+<dt class="center" id="index_Y"><b>Y</b></dt>
+<dt>Younger, Tillie, member of Jesse James guerrillas, dies at Shoshone, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></dt>
+<dt>Yundt, John, Lee and Sam, owners of Manse Ranch, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-100</dt>
+</dl>
+<div class="box">
+<h2><span class="small"><i>The Author</i></span></h2>
+<p>Nearly every newspaperman looks forward to the time when
+he can get away from the pressure of his journalistic job and
+retire to a little cottage by the sea, or a cabin in the mountains,
+and write a book.</p>
+<p>The only difference between William Caruthers&mdash;Bill, to his
+friends&mdash;and a majority of the others is that he did write his book
+on the spot, preserved it and after retiring to his orange grove
+near Ontario, California he got around to the job of revision,
+which resulted in these pages.</p>
+<p>Born on the banks of the Cumberland River in Tennessee,
+Caruthers&rsquo; career as a journalist began when he became editor of
+the local weekly paper at the age of 16. He took the job, he
+explains, because no one else wanted it.</p>
+<p>His family wanted him to be a lawyer, and in compliance
+with their wishes he returned to school and was admitted to
+the bar in Tennessee when he was 19. But he wanted to be a
+newspaperman, and vowed that when he won his first $2,000 fee
+he would quit law. Successful as a young lawyer, the time
+soon came when he won a tough case against a big insurance
+company&mdash;and that was his chance. He closed his law office
+forever.</p>
+<p>For a time he was editor of Illustrated Youth and Age, the
+largest monthly in the South. He wrote feature articles for the
+Nashville American, Nashville Banner, the old New York World,
+the Christian Science Monitor, fiction for Collier&rsquo;s Weekly and
+other important magazines. His writings have appeared in most
+Western magazines.</p>
+<p>After coming to California he first went to work on the
+Los Angeles Examiner, quitting that job to become a publisher
+and his little magazine, <i>The Bystander</i> gained nationwide
+circulation. While editing this magazine he became editor of
+Los Angeles&rsquo; first theatrical magazine, <i>The Rounder</i>, which was
+a &ldquo;must&rdquo; on the list of early movie stars and soon discovered that
+the most lucrative field for a journalist was in ghost writing. As
+a &ldquo;ghost&rdquo; he addressed big political conventions, assemblies of
+governors and mayors and in one instance, a jury as the prosecutor.
+One eastern industrialist paid him a fabulous fee when the address
+Caruthers wrote for him brought a great ovation.</p>
+<p>Finally his physician warned him to slow down. It was then&mdash;in
+1926&mdash;that he came to the desert, and, during the intervening
+25 years, has spent much of his time in the Death Valley region.
+He has witnessed the transition of Death Valley from a prospector&rsquo;s
+hunting ground to a mecca for winter tourists. This is a
+book of the old days in Death Valley.</p>
+</div>
+<h2><span class="small">Transcriber&rsquo;s Notes</span></h2>
+<ul><li>Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.</li>
+<li>Corrected a few palpable typos.</li>
+<li>Added page numbers to plates (in roman numerals).</li>
+<li>Included a transcription of the text within some images.</li>
+<li>In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.</li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Loafing Along Death Valley Trails, by 
+William Caruthers
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOAFING ALONG DEATH VALLEY TRAILS ***
+
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author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-02-05 19:19:45 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-02-05 19:19:45 -0800
commit	0ee1ca3b44ba12f975cbc3ad348189cb954b5d1c (patch)
tree	e7b7f61084b7c7026fea50702df0d2756082597c