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.