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.