looked across to the “scary” ledge, and straight up to the tunnel—and
then I started up on the run, the loose rock in places sliding me back
almost as fast as I was gaining. However, I made the tunnel, completely
exhausted. I did not sit down to rest. I fell down. And I crawled into
the tunnel where there was ice—in July—and revived quickly. One of the
men was hampered in that climb with a wooden leg, which afforded me
ample time to recover before their arrival—but my own legs were still
shaky as I eased myself around that projecting ledge, grabbing the strap
now and then, while coming down. I don’t know how the first strap-holder
got around without help—nor the last one, either.
Mr. Mann said I had taken a great risk; that he had called to me to come
back; that the exertion required to negotiate that heap of sliderock
was really too much for one unaccustomed to the high altitude; that he
himself—a seasoned mountain man—would not have undertaken it for the
whole mine. And, you know, after I had taken one peep at the spot of
interest in the tunnel, I thought, “Neither would I.”
The prospect did not look good to me—nor was I fooled by the enthusiasm
of my inexperienced associates, but I wanted to go along with them. The
other Wetmore men thought enough of the prospect to locate adjoining
claims, naming them for their children—The Marsena, The Gracie, and The
Marguerite. I had no child, not even a wife—so no claim. But I then and
there made a resolve to learn something more about that enticing mining
game, perhaps elsewhere. And in the final analysis I suppose I have.
Doctor Lapham was the principal exuder of enthusiasm, an inborn trait
which came to the fore again in a big way on the train enroute to Salt
Lake City. The Doctor had spent some time in the smoker, and came
back to the coach all “hepped” up. Rubbing his hands together in his
characteristic manner, he said he had gotten—on the qt—a tip from the
newsboy that an observation car was to be hooked on at Gunnison, for the
trip through Colorado’s most colorful canyon. The observation car would
be on a siding to the left of our train—and that the favored few were to
make a dash for it the moment the train stopped.
The Doctor was always putting forth his best efforts to make us all
comfortable—and happy. He said he had bought a book of views, paying
$2 for it, something he really didn’t care a whoop for—but he wanted to
reward the boy for his kind tip. With an eye for business, the newsboy
had also tipped off other passengers.
The “observation” car was only a coalcar having temporary backless board
seats placed crosswise of the car. One had to climb over the seats,
or step across from one plank to another to get to the rear end of the
car—all right for the fellow who had so recently clambered up the tunnel
dump, but very awkward for the women and the man with the wooden leg.
Many of the passengers looked at the thing and went back to the
coaches, and some abandoned their seats and went inside after the train
started—but our men folk, being well to the rear and encumbered with
helpless women whom they did not wish to lose just then, couldn’t even
do that once the train headed into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a
narrow gorge with 2800-foot almost perpendicular walls, following
the serpentine course of the Gunnison river, on a steeply down grade,
switching the “observation” car like a whipcracker from one black
wall to the other. Hot cinders rained down on us so that we could look
neither to the right, or the left—nor up. Now, Lap’s newsboy came aboard
crying, “Goggles, goggles, goggles!”
And the appreciative Doctor gave the boy some more money.
We had done Denver, Colorado Springs, Manitou and Pike’s Peak—and
Cripple Creek. And we had all climbed “Tenderfoot” Mountain while
waiting over-night at Salida for train connection—and I individually
had literally sat on the proverbial powderkeg for three hours during a
twenty-mile overland drive. Mr. Mann had provided a spring wagon for the
other members of the party, and I, being unexpected, was conducted to
a freight wagon going our way. When told, near the end of the journey,
that I was sitting on a box of dynamite I blew up—in spirit. But nowhere
had we experienced anything so disappointing as this “observation”
car ride. It is anchored in my memory as the one really big scene that
beggared description.
NOTE — The railroad through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison has been
abandoned, and sightseers may now view this colorful canyon from their
automobiles over a highway—a “highway,” mind you, more than a half mile
down in a narrow slit in the earth.
Then, again, my newspaper friend, William Allen White, of the Emporia
Gazette, toured the western mining districts and wrote enthusiastically
about some newly discovered mining opportunity in the west, known as
Thunder Mountain. It stimulated my desire. I wrote William Allen, asking
him if he would, as one newspaperman to another, advise me to try
my luck at Thunder Mountain? His personal letter to me was even more
optimistic than was his editorial. Like Horace Greely, his advice was
substantially, “By all means go west, young man, and give it a try.”
But I did not fetch up at Thunder Mountain. On the advice of another
friend, I dumped the proceeds from the sale of my newspaper, sight
unseen, in a hole in Nevada — while the wise Mr. White kept on
publishing his Gazette; wrote a best seller book, “A Certain Rich Man,”
and got rich himself. His name and fame are to be perpetuated in the
erection of a public library building in Emporia; while I, his misguided
friend, still have my laurels to make. And, incidentally, as a mining
man, after that first big blow, I never again heard of Thunder Mountain.
Now back to the desert—and the printed Crescent story.
Our contribution here at Crescent, with a minimum of outside help, was
a 500-foot tunnel driven into the side of a mountain—the rock shot with
high assay in gold and silver and copper. But the cost of this work,
though a dead loss and highly disheartening, was as nothing compared to
the outlay for the 2197 feet of tunnels and shafts we have driven—also
with a minimum of help—through solid rock on our Goodsprings claims,
where production, though quite good at times, has never caught up with
expenses.
And the end is not yet.
You can take it from me that a man has to be insensible to pain to laugh
this off.
On the train away back in the valley on this my first trip to Crescent,
the conductor had pointed to a distant cluster of white flecks barely
discernible through the shimmering, sun-drenched haze that lies always,
like a pall, over the desert, and said to me, “There she is—the biggest
thing in all Nevada!”
I had become chummy with the conductor, and that chumminess increased
mightily when we learned that we were both on the way to become
millionaires—as we visualized it then—through the mining route. He told
me that he knew my mining partner, that he had engaged Frank Williams to
look after the assessment work on some claims he himself owned over in
the Goodsprings district. And when I asked the conductor his name and
made a move as if to write it down, he shook his head negatively
and threw out his hands in a gesture of utter uselessness, and said,
“Oh-hell, man, you couldn’t forget it as long as you are in this
country. It’s Dry—just plain William Dry.”
My friend’s parting words to me were a mixture of jocularity and serious
hope. “Well, so long, old top,” he said. “See you again when we fetch up
at the end of the rainbow.”
And do you know, the next time I saw that conductor, two years later—and
I might say before either of us had made any appreciable advances on the
rainbow’s elusive end — he recognized me at once, and in offering his
hand, said: “It’s Dry.” And I said, “Oh-hell, man, don’t I know it!”
And so it was.
That meeting was in Superintendent J. Ross Clark’s private car, hitched
to the flyer. We had exchanged some correspondence before, and Ross
wanted to tell me in as hopeful words as possible that the officials of
his railroad were still watching the situation closely and would build a
branch line into our district—to our claims and to his claims — just as
soon as the required tonnage was assured. You see, J. Ross Clark, too,
was possessed of the desire to harvest a quick fortune and owned mining
claims across the flat from our claims in the Goodsprings district.
That meeting with J. Ross Clark bore fruit for me, though—and it was
the means of holding up the Los Angeles Limited for an hour, as well.
Several years later I had an important engagement at Goodsprings and was
delayed seven hours in Pueblo on the way out there, owing to a change in
time of the Denver & Rio Grande trains. The best I could do then was to
arrive in Salt Lake five minutes after the Limited’s leaving time,
at one o’clock at night, with depots a mile apart. Failure to keep my
appointment at Goodsprings would mean disappointment to others and a
money loss to me, as well as a wasted trip. In desperation, I went to
the up-town office of the Denver & Rio Grande, and asked the agent there
to try to have the Los Angeles train held for me at Salt Lake. Nothing
doing. That important personage swelled up to full capacity and said,
“Evidently, if the San Pedro people wanted to neighbor with my Company
they would change their leaving time.”
Next, I asked the conductor on the Rio Grande train to wire ahead for
me—and I am happy to state he was a gentleman. Also he was a one-time
miner. “Tried it once over at Aspen,” he told me. And right away there
was a bond of sympathy, or something, between us. That conductor really
wanted to help me. But, as he told me he had wired the San Pedro people
several times without results, I had to think of some other way, for I
wanted to make that Limited as a lost soul wants to make Paradise.
It was then I thought of J. Ross Clark. What was the good of making
friends, if you could not use them? The Rio Grande conductor obligingly
held his train for me at Green River, Utah, while I filed a message to
the Superintendent of the San Pedro lines. We arrived in Salt Lake ten
minutes ahead of time, and the conductor, pointing to a hack-stand, said
to me, “Now hurry—the Los Angeles train may be a little late in getting
away.”
At the San Pedro station I found the Limited all steamed up, ready to
go—and I boarded it quickly, all out of breath. But there was no need
for hurrying. Presently the conductor came along and asked me: “Did you
come in on Rio Grande Three?” I told him I did. Then he asked, “First or
second section?” I admitted that I didn’t know the train had been split
up at Grand Junction. The conductor, wanting to be sure of his order,
drew a yellow slip from his pocket, and re-read: “Hold for one or more
passengers off Rio Grande Three.” He then said, “Yes, that’s it. I’m
sure you are the man I’m holding for—but I’ll have to wait for the
second section.” And it was an hour late.
I think perhaps Ross had put in his order the words “one or more” solely
as a precaution against the possibility of being accused of showing
partiality to his mining neighbor, in breaking rules. Anyway, J. Ross
Clark had no call for worry. His brother, William A. Clark, a mining
man, controlling, among other holdings, the fabulously rich United Verde
mine at Jerome, Arizona, owned also forty-nine per cent of the San
Pedro lines—and was at this time operating the road under a twenty-year
control agreement. It is now in full control of the Union Pacific.
The Limited was not scheduled to stop at Jean, Nevada, my destination.
The regular procedure would have been for me to go on down the line
forty miles or more and then double back on a local train. But when the
Limited began slowing down on approaching Jean, the conductor said to
me, “No, don’t jump—wait ‘till she stops.”
The engineer climbed down from his cab. The conductor hopped off the
train and yelled, “Hey, Bill, what’s wrong?” I knew what was wrong. And
Bill knew; and the conductor knew; and possibly one other knew—but that
was all. And whose business was it, anyway?
The lost hour had been made up before the train pulled into Caliente,
Nevada, where it halted ten minutes. And, paradoxically, it gained
another hour there in that ten minutes. Caliente—Mexican for hot—is
where Pacific time begins.
Bill had left that division point “on time” and held to the fast
schedule all the way. And I’ll bet Bill and his relief engineer landed
the old Limited in Los Angeles on the dot — even though there were
miles and miles of desert wasteland, with two high mountain ranges, and,
finally, a beautiful irrigated valley with orange groves and banks and
banks of roses, yet to be crossed.
As the Limited started to move again the conductor threw me a last
cheerful word: “You’ll have only a little way to walk.” And I could only
hope that there was no one to report that conductor—nor my friend Ross.
You see, it was Dry again.
All about lay the eternal waste of the desert and mountain slopes,
barren and desolate, walled in that arid corner of the world.
THE WIFE—AT GOODSPRINGS Not Hitherto Published — 1947
By John T. Bristow
To round out the foregoing story, I might say here that my wife was a
guest for the week during my absence in Crescent, at Mrs. Yount’s hotel
in Goodsprings. Sam Yount, the landlady’s husband, was leading
merchant, postmaster, private banker—and miner. And he backed the hotel
proposition too. The sleeping quarters of the hotel were a detached row
of ground-floor rooms close by the main structure. It was before the
building in Goodsprings of the Southern Nevada Hotel, said at the time
to have been the most commodious hotel in the state. It was before the
camp boasted a newspaper, even before the camp got electricity.
My wife was not versed in the ways of the West; and she had some
misgivings about making this stop-over on the desert, particularly
because of the lateness of our train, while on our way to visit my
people in California. I had told her that of the many times I had been
out there I had never seen a gun-toting man—and that there was a fixed
impression that it would be about as much as a man’s life was worth to
molest a woman.
This trip was made at a time following the great flood that had wiped
out all the railroad bridges for many miles along the Meadow Valley
Wash, in eastern Nevada. Owing to a slow track, our train, due in Jean
in the forenoon, did not arrive until near midnight. There were no
accommodations at Jean when I was last out there, and I had told Myrtle
that, as we would now miss the stage, we might have to sit in the depot
until morning, or walk ten miles across the desert to Goodsprings.
Frankly, she was not of a mind to do anything of the kind. She said
we could remain on the train, go on to Los Angeles, and maybe stop at
Goodsprings on our return trip—or we could, as far as she was concerned,
pass it up altogether. I pointed out that we could hardly do this,
with her trunk and all her fine clothes—clothes she didn’t need at
all—checked through to Jean. And besides, we would be returning by way
of San Francisco.
Remember, I had told her that I had never seen a gun toter in the West.
Remember also that this was before Crescent. Then, imagine my surprise,
and the wife’s renewed misgivings, when, on getting off at Jean, the
first and only man to be seen had a murderous looking six-shooter
strapped on him. And the wife had so little respect for my veracity as
to tell me right out loud that in her best judgement I had purposely
misrepresented matters to her.
George Fayle, whom I had known in Goodsprings — associated with
Sam Yount—had come over to the railroad to engage in the mercantile
business. He owned a general store, a restaurant, and was building a
hotel. This made matters fine for us—almost. Fayle was postmaster, and
handled pouch mail between the postoffice and the trains. The gun he
carried was only routine.
George Fayle took us to a ground-floor room in his unfinished hotel. The
room had wallboard partitions, bed upon springs flat on the floor, with
a blanket hung across the outside door opening, leaving one-fourth of
the space with nothing but thin desert air between us and the unknown.
George did not tell us what kind of characters he was harboring beyond
the cardboard—but he did wish us a pleasant good night, and, patting his
six-shooter, said we would be perfectly safe, as is.
But the wife did not readily catch the spirit of the West. I had
told her that the desert was overrun with lizards and sidewinder
rattlesnakes, the poisonous kind that travel in spiral form with head up
ready for a strike at all times. She put in most of the remainder of
the night watching the 18-inch opening between the blanket and the
floor—precisely for what, she could not be sure. Luckily there was no
wind. The blanket hung limp throughout the night. I can swear to that.
Two of a kind, you might say.
At breakfast, George told me there had been a manhunt the day before
over in the country west of Goodsprings — that an escaped convict was
reportedly holed up in the hills east of Sandy. That would be in the
neighborhood of our lead mine. The wife took this in without comment
— but it was plain to be seen that she was stowing it away for future
consideration.
When Frank and I had returned from our tour of inspection at Crescent,
after nightfall, we found the Good-springs camp in an awful state of
alarm. My wife, fully dressed, was sitting upright in the middle of the
bed in our ground-floor room, afraid to put foot on the floor. She had
been so since shortly after dusk. Dusk—that indeterminate translucent
veil which, like a mist, screens and magnifies, transposing even the
most common objects into phantom figures.
She had heard a scraping noise, likely a block away, but at such times
the imagination does tricks to one’s reasoning. In her state of nervous
tension, it was but natural for her to imagine that indistinct noise had
come from under the bed, the obvious place for an intruder to hide.
Ordinarily Myrtle was not given to such fits of timidity. But she had
entered the country under trying conditions, and therefore was not
prepared for the many unexpected irregularities. We had not counted on
our train being so far behind time as to land us out there in the middle
of the night. With my memory of the surroundings as I last knew them,
it required a lot of silent argument with myself to get up courage
to subject her to the risk we must necessarily take in finding
accommodations of any sort, at Jean. I knew there were ten miles of
desert on either side of the railroad station. That the country was
not inhabited might or might not have been in our favor. Certainly, it
presaged loneliness—and it was dark.
A woman at the hotel in Goodsprings thought she had glimpsed the deadly
thing, at dusk, near the sleeping quarters—and Myrtle’s door had been
left open for a brief spell while she was out. Or rather the door had
been found open on her return—she just wasn’t sure how it was. Myrtle
informed me that all the other women in camp were just as frightened as
she was. And she bade me look under the bed, forthwith.
The thing I was supposed to make sure was—or wasn’t — there, had an
overall length of about two feet, a width of four to five inches, an
inch or so less in height when inactive—and it was a little pot-bellied.
It was rusty in color, with yellowish spots distributed the full length
of its body. It had a fat meaty tail, and a broad ugly looking head.
There really was something alive under the bed. It moved. Its eyes
moved toward me. Also there were now two people upon the bed. And
simultaneously the door swung open, as if the devil was in cahoots with
the thing, bent on letting in all the demons of a wicked world. I had
hit the bed on the bounce with a jarring thud, causing the door to
swing in, as it invariably did when not securely latched. And the cat
“hightailed it” out into the night.
But the house cat was not the thing so much dreaded.
Mr. Springer’s Gila Monster, a lizard-like reptile, even more poisonous
than the rattlesnake, was on the loose. It had got out of its place of
confinement two days back, and diligent search by the whole camp had
failed to locate it. On the third day, however, the Monster was found
at a water-hole, an old trench dug years before by our former Wetmore
citizen, Green Campbell. The camp demanded that the reptile be killed
immediately.
Elwood Thomas, also formerly of Wetmore, was a close neighbor to Mr.
Springer, and he had carried the word of caution to Myrtle. It was all
so very exciting—even worse than a panther scare. And, miraculously, the
wife was to experience that one too before leaving the Goodsprings camp.
We were to go with Frank Williams to stay over Sunday at our lead mine,
which was twelve miles over the mountain range on the west side. The
daily stage (except Sunday) passed within a few hundred yards of the
mine. Frank and I started to walk over, at sunup, on Saturday morning.
Myrtle was to go over on the stage in the afternoon.
image332
To make a short cut, Frank and I took a burro trail at the summit, near
the Columbia mine. While trailing that rugged miner ten yards in the
rear, going down on the west side, I sprained my right ankle, badly,
rolling down the slope almost to where Frank was—my camera trailing in
the wake, taking the bumps.
We stopped for a brief rest at the Hoosier mine—formerly owned by
Frank’s uncle, Elwood Thomas—where the miners were taking out zinc ore,
a new find in that district. And “tenderfoot” though I was, I made a
discovery there which had escaped my seasoned miner-partner for a whole
year. At least I thought I had done this to him. Frank had cut through a
12-foot body of identical appearing stuff in running the tunnel, and had
several tons of it ricked up on the dump. It would require an assay to
convince him that we had a zinc mine, as well as a lead mine.
In accordance with the miners’ code we were invited to stop at the
Hoosier shack in the foothills and get our dinners. By this time my
swollen ankle was hurting so badly that I preferred not to stop until
we could get out to the stage road a mile farther on—but Frank said
it would be an insult to the Hoosier boys for us to pass them by. And
besides he was hungry. Also, according to the miners’ code Frank had to
wash his dirty dishes. This is a must in the mining country.
image333
This is where I went down—second time. Took this picture while waiting
for the stage. Frank’s mail box is about a mile around the bend of the
road. The trail—foot path—going over the mountain starts near the right
edge of this view’ and tops the mountain starts near the right edge of
this view, and tops the mountain at the head of a canyon, on the other
side.
We reached the stage road about two hours before the stage was due.
Frank walked on three miles farther to the mine, and I hobbled along
until within a mile of “our” mountain—then my ankle toppled me over
again, and I lay there with my head shaded by a single sagebrush. As the
sun moved along on its westward course—which of course it didn’t do at
all—I had to scratch gravel frequently, sliding on my back, to keep my
head shielded from the burning desert sun.
The stage-driver let us off at Frank’s mail box, and Myrtle had a hard
time helping me over the hump and down the canyon to the mine. We took
the short cut over the mountain instead of going a mile or more around
on the wagon road; through a saddle-back, and then up the canyon to the
mine, which would have been less arduous. We were carrying provisions
for six meals for the three of us. There was water at the mine. It
had rained a month before, and Frank had scooped up the water out of
a ditch. No fiction in this. Water really “keeps” out there—when in an
underground house, anyway.
We had overlooked the need for candles and coffee—or rather they were
missing from the pack. Acting on Frank’s suggestion, Myrtle went out on
the mountain side, gathered leaves from the lowly sage brush—and we had
our tea. But the absence of candles was a more serious matter. Frank
hunted the underground house, and the tunnels, finally finding a
two-inch piece of candle at the far end of a 500-foot tunnel.