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.”