Loafing along Death Valley trails

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:

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.