house. To get into the place we had to hug a wall as we approached the
door to avoid dropping into a 60-foot shaft by the side of the entrance,
where Frank had taken out $65 worth of RICH silver ore—at a cost of $500
for digging the hole.
There were mice, and probably lizards too, running over our bed on the
floor. Little lizards were very active on the outside, in the daytime.
And Frank and I had killed a rattlesnake while strolling about over the
grounds the year before. The crack under the door was big enough to let
in almost anything short of a panther.
Also, a big body of ore protruding from the ceiling directly over our
bed looked as if it might slip from its moorings with the slightest jar,
and there was some jarring force at work all through the night. Grains
of crushed limestone, like sand, sifted down upon us almost continously.
Myrtle spent the night lighting, blowing out, and relighting that little
piece of candle. In this way she made it last until morning.
The next night—Sunday night—we slept, or rather bunked, on an
ore-sorting table out on the tunnel dump, under the stars. Frank had
taken his bedroll a hundred yards down the canyon to find level “ground”
on which to make his spread. I had sent an old trunk filled with bedding
including a couple of pillows the year before. The wife thought Frank
had been a little lax in the matter of laundering same.
image335
After going over the mountain (at left) we — Myrtle and I — came down
the canyon to the mine. The tunnel dump shows between the two arms of the
mountain — about a half mile away. Getting down from the top was tough.
I had to back down much of the way — and have a lot of help. Frank had
said he would meet us at the mailbox — but he was taking lessons in
French off a gramophone and did not show up until we were well along the
way to the mine. Frank’s and Edith’s first tent house — part canvas —
was built was built on this dump.
This, of course, was before Frank had gone East to study political
economy. Also it was before he had brought back to the mine a New
England school teacher called Edith, bearing his name. There was no
laxity after Edith took charge. And, with this touch of “new life” on
the job, the mine, besides yielding rich ore, sparingly, produced two
fine little girls, Ruth and Helen—girls that grew up at the mine. With
their father a graduate of Campbell University, Holton, Kansas, and
their mother holding a teacher’s certificate, the girls didn’t fare
badly, even in semi-isolation. As a matter of fact, district school was
held for a time in their home, with their mother as teacher.
The home at this time was a four-room house on a 5-acre water claim—held
in connection with the mining claims — on the edge of Mesquite Valley,
one mile from the mine. There was a 75-foot dug well, with windmill,
and running water in the house. And there were growing fruit trees,
a vineyard in bearing, and a green—very green alfalfa patch. The two
Williams girls represented two-sevenths of the possible pupils for the
school.
Then a little green school house was erected not more than three hundred
yards from their door—with Miss Leah Lytle as first teacher—where all
seven of the miners’ children studied their lessons, romped and played
among the sage and mesquite. While so doing, Helen Williams was bitten
by a rattlesnake. She was taken to Las Vegas, the nearest big town,
fifty miles away for treatment—and that move spelled the end of the
little green school house in the Mesquite Valley so far as the two girls
were concerned. They finished their schooling in Las Vegas, graduating
from the high school there. Then, when Rex Ewing, Frank William’s
closest mining neighbor, moved to Las Vegas to capture some of the
prevailing high wages, the school blew up. Rex had supplied the other
five pupils. The sequence of events as set down here may be faulty—but
were I able to chronicle them in order, the result would be the same.
This, I believe, is noteworthy. Besides the single claim purchased by
Frank and me from S. C. Root, operator on Bonanza Hill, one mile south
of our holdings, Frank Williams located three more adjoining claims,
taking in practically all the surface ore croppings on this mountain—and
recorded them in one group, which meant that the work done on any one
claim of the group, if extensive enough, would satisfy the $100 annual
assessment for each claim.
There was, however, a small showing of ore apparently like the zinc at
the Hoosier mine just outside those claims, on the west, close to the
wagon road Frank had blasted out, at considerable expense, to get up
to the tunnel he was driving. There were no other operators on that
mountain. Frank was lonesome. He wanted neighbors. Old man Ewing and son
Rex, nomad sojourners in Goodsprings, were invited to come out and try
their luck on that small cropping.
The Ewings struck pay ore almost from the start, and began shipments,
while Frank was still driving his tunnel — with ever increasing high
hope. Frank’s wagon road proved to be a big asset for his new neighbors.
Rex Ewing also mined commercial lead ore back on the high end of his
claims, which was brought down to the wagon road by burro pack. Large
trucks now travel that wagon road right up to Frank’s ore bin, at the
mouth of the tunnel, and take off with five tons to the load.
At this juncture I might say that though Frank has spent fifty-five of
his seventy-six years—as of this date, 1947—in the Nevada mines, he has
met with only two accidents, and neither of them was actually in the
mines. He was working alone at our Crescent claims, and by way of
a little deviation from routine work, undertook to blow open a big
boulder—just curious to see what was inside. It was not in the way—and
it would have told him nothing of advantage had he proved his suspicion
that it contained gold, for gold was showing in the ledge up slope from
which the boulder had been dislodged. What I said to Frank when he told
me he meant to waste a day in blowing open that big rock does not matter
now. Nor did it matter then.
Even before Frank had started to drill the boulder, while clearing away
some loose rock, it rolled half-over, pinning him underneath. I judged
the boulder would weigh two tons, maybe more—but a smaller rock had
prevented it from crushing the life out of Frank. Two miners were
working, in sight, across the canyon about a quarter mile away—and Frank
called and hollered for seven hours without attracting them.
Now, here is something that, from my power of reasoning, is
inexplicable. There are, however, people who would have a ready
explanation for it. Elwood Thomas, Frank’s uncle, had driven his team of
ponies from Goodsprings over to Searchlight, ten miles beyond Crescent,
and was returning late in the afternoon, aiming to go by way of
Crescent, as it was shorter and a better road.
Elwood told me that when he had come to the by-road leading through the
canyon past his nephew’s location, he naturally thought of Frank, and
as he drove on toward Crescent he began to think he should have gone
the other road. He said, “Something told me to turn around—I wouldn’t
pretend to say what it was—but it was so strong, so insistent, that I
did turn around after I had gone a mile.” He found Frank still hollering
for help—but his calls were now very feeble. With the help of the two
miners Frank had been trying to attract, Elwood got him out from under
the boulder, loaded him into the wagon, and drove on down through the
canyon and across the big flat to Nipton, the railroad station. Frank
was put on the train and taken to a hospital in Los Angeles. He was
paralyzed from the waist down. Six weeks in the hospital fixed him up as
good as ever. Frank was on his own then—that is, had no insurance.
The expense was terrific. I think Frank never did get his curiosity
satisfied about the boulder.
As his inactive partner, I cautioned Frank against working alone in
those remote places—but it did no good. He said he was safer working
alone in the mines than I was when riding the trains between Kansas
and Nevada. When I first went into the mining country, I observed that
practically all prospectors had partners. I asked an Irishman (a miner)
why was it so? He said, “And how the divvel would a man pull his-self up
out of a hole widout a partner?” But there was a more important
reason. It was for protection against accidents such as Frank had just
experienced.
Frank’s second accident, more serious than the other one, was at our
Goodsprings mine, while loading out vanadium ore on Government contract,
in more recent years. He was unable to tell how it happened. The trucker
had left with a 5-ton load, and Frank was “waiting around” for him to
come back for a second load. When the truck driver got back from his
ten-mile trip over the mountain, he found Frank wandering around down on
the road below the ore bin, in a dazed condition—really worse than that.
Frank wrote me later that he remembered standing on the ore bin after
the trucker had gone with his load, and thought he must have fallen
off—but remembered nothing more. The ore bin is built against the slope
of the mountain, having a flat top about 16x20 feet, on a level of the
tunnel, with car-track extending to the outer edge, where a drop would
be about 18 feet—and less, (to nothing), at the upper end of the ore
bin. Frank did not say where he was standing in the last moments of
consciousness—but a fall from anywhere near the upper edge would mean a
rough tumble all the way down to the road.
When Frank was taken to the Las Vegas hospital, it was found he had
a broken collarbone, a bad head injury — and a touch of pneumonia. He
remained two months in the hospital, at state expense, plus $90 per
month compensation — with final payment of $1,500, on a basis of
one-fourth incapacitation.
In Nevada now you don’t have to apply for state insurance. If you are a
miner, you’ve got it, with monthly billing—unless you have filed notice
that you do not want it.
The Williams girls are both married and live in Las Vegas. Helen is the
wife of Vaughn Holt, a barber. When I called at her home in 1941 she had
a very sweet little girl not quite a year old. Ruth’s husband, Charles
Thomas, is a linotype operator on Frank Garside’s Daily newspaper. He
is not the Charley Thomas who grew up in Wetmore and spent many years
in Nevada. That Charley was the son of Elwood Thomas and was Frank
William’s cousin. And it so happens that Ruth now takes her grandmother
Williams’ maiden name—Ruth Thomas.
Frank Garside, postmaster at Las Vegas, and publisher of the Daily
Review there, formerly lived in Atchison. His aunt, Frances Garside—well
known to me at that time — made a record writing “Globe Sights” for Ed
Howe’s Daily Globe, back in the “Gay Nineties.”
And now the panther. Maybe it was only a wildcat, but its scream was
enough to put fear in the “sleepers” out on the tunnel dump. The varmint
came yowling down the canyon, fifteen feet away from our bunk, going on
down the trail Frank had taken with his bedroll. Frank said the thing
had been heard several times before, and he was not sure if it was a
panther, or a wildcat. Panthers—called cougars in the west—he said, were
very much in evidence down on the Rim; that is, the high bank of the
Colorado river. And something very like the cougar in habit had killed a
calf in the valley, close by. Myrtle regarded the thing as a threatening
menace, and had it not been for that exposed shaft at the entrance
of the underground house, she doubtless would have made a break for
shelter. And I think that, notwithstanding my black and blue ankle, I
should have followed pronto.
However, Myrtle was compensated for all this by the fact—vouched for by
Frank Williams—that she was the first white woman to set foot on that
mountain. By the same line of reasoning, Edith Willams was, I suppose,
if we can be sure Frank knows his history, the second, and probably the
last, white woman to climb Hunter mountain.
Looking across the canyon, and gesturing toward the mountain-side where
some work had been done, Myrtle laughingly said to Frank and me, “I
suppose you two old grizzled miners think that ‘Thar’s gold in them thar
hills’.”
Myrtle had trod some pretty rocky ground, literally and figuratively,
since coming into camp—besides heating gallons of water from time
to time at the mine to bathe my sprained ankle—and she certainly was
entitled to indulge in a little “fun” at our expense. Myrtle had quoted
correctly, but that “grizzled” reference belonged to quite another class
of miners. And I may say this was the first and only time I had ever
heard that bewhiskered old saying while in the mining country. It was
of course a carryover from another era. And, had she not questioned my
statement about the gun-toters, I should have told her that there are no
such animals in the mining country now.
Myrtle was holding in her hand a gold nugget—real, glittering, yellow
gold — about the size of a walnut, and Frank knew instantly its source.
She had taken it out of my pocket—but I doubt if Frank knew positively,
until this minute, that I had it. He said to me, “You better drop it in
that shaft over there by the underground house. There’s but one place
that it could have come from—and if exhibited around here, it might get
somebody in trouble.” He hastened to say, however, that it would not
be me; that he was sure that I had got it legitimately, though maybe a
little less openly than the $10 nugget I had secured when he and I were
exploring the depths of the famous Quartette mine at Searchlight. That’s
the place where someone had said before the camp was named that it would
take a searchlight to locate pay ore.
I said, “Yeah, drop it in the shaft and have someone in the future find
it, and then spend thousands of dollars trying to locate its source.”
He said, “Any miner who knows his stuff would know that it didn’t
originate in this lime formation. It’s straight out of a porphyry
dike—and was, until you got hold of it, closely guarded under lock and
key.”
I could have told him that I knew all this, but a more brilliant idea
struck me—leastwise just for the moment I thought it was bright. But,
then, on second thought, what if the assay on our big body of material I
had been so sure was just like the Hoosier zinc, should prove me wrong.
Well, anyway, I would “ shoot the works.”
I said, “It strikes me that there are some men around here who count
themselves miners that do not exactly at all times know their stuff.”
Myrtle said, “Now, now—don’t commence on that zinc again.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ll still bet my old hat that it is zinc.”
Frank said, quickly, “If it’s zinc, I’ll eat your old hat — and do it
with relish, too, brother.”
“And in that case, if you win, smart boy, you still stand to lose your
hat,” said Myrtle, to me.
I believe Frank had already begun to see the light, sense a probability,
cherish a hope. Although lead ore running 71 and 72 per cent by the
carload had been shipped, the present lean condition of our lead mine
could well stand bolstering with a big body of zinc. But of course he
would not want to admit, first off, that his “tenderfoot” partner had
stumbled onto something of such vital importance. In school, and at
countryside lyceums back home, Frank was a top negative debater—always
on the “contrary” side. And it was probably the stubborn Welsh in him
that caused him to stick by his guns now”His father had been a miner
back in Wales—in the identical neighborhood’ that afterwards became
known as the locale of the movie, “How Green Was My Valley?”:
I do not know the result of the assay made by Harry Riddell for
Frank—but I do know that Frank wrote me, that fortunately, I was going
to be minus an old hat, someday. But, for the present, would I send him
$500 to start operations on “our lucky zinc find?”
An assay made for me, by C. S. Cowan, whom I met on the train, and who
was assayer at W. A. Clark’s United Verde mine, Jerome, Arizona, showed
fifty-five per cent zinc. Assayer Cowan wrote me that it was a big
surprise to him. He had told me he doubted if the sample would show any
zinc.
In the crude, it shipped out by the carload at forty-three percent. But
at that, it was no bonanza. Western smelters could not handle that class
of ore—and the freight rate to the zinc smelters in the gas fields of
southern Kansas, was $500 a car.
Unlike the dark sulphides of the Joplin (Mo.) and Galena (Kans.)
district, where paying mines were operating on six per cent zinc, ours
was a carbonate ore, running to high values. It was light in color,
with the richer ore comparatively light in weight. Frank said it would
likely, as she goes down, turn to sulphides and be more permanent, with
less values.
But, brother—”she” didn’t go down.
By way of explanation, I might say here that on the preceding Friday,
Frank and I paid a visit to the Keystone mine near the summit, north of
the Goodsprings highway. Situated in a porphyry zone, it was the only
gold mine of importance in the district—with an output of more than
a million dollars up to that time. And it might be consoling to my
partner, who at that time (1907) had spent sixteen of his thirty-seven
years working in the Nevada mines, to state here what he already
knows—in fact, he’s the source of my information—that Jonas Taylor,
working a silver deposit on his claim, allowed the Keystone gold ledge
to lay dormant for three years after he had discovered it. But when he
did finally wake up to its possibilities, three days work rewarded
him with a four-foot vein of gold ore running $1,000 to the ton—in
shipments.
Our former Wetmore citizen, Green Campbell, did not get in on this—but
he located, and his estate still owns the Golden Chariot, adjoining. And
one of Green’s associates, William Smith, hurriedly fetched his friend
Samuel Godbe over from Pioche, and after one look at the uncovered
ledge, the latter played a winning hand in a big game without risking
any chips. Mr. Godbe asked for, and received from Mr. Taylor, a thirty
day option on one-half interest for $20,000. Mr. Godbe then rushed to
San Francisco and sold half of a half-interest to Mr. Perry, a banker
acquaintance, for $20,000 cash. A few months later Mr. Perry sold his
quarter interest to Mr. Blake, of Denver, for $40,000. And nobody had
lost any money — yet.
We had driven Sam Yount’s big sorrel mare up Kerby gulch to the Kerby
mine, owned by the Campbell estate. From there, we walked maybe a couple
of miles—a pretty rough climb—to the Keystone, arriving at about 10
o’clock. The camp cook, the only man above ground, thought the
miners were working on the 800-foot level. Frank said he knew his way
around—that we would go down in the mine and contact them. He had worked
in the Keystone a short while before.
Like an addict bucking a slot machine always hoping for the next turn to
crack the jackpot, Frank had put his last dollar into the development of
our own prospect, and consequently had been compelled to work in other
mines to get a stake. And since it was not in the cards for Frank to
distinguish himself, as part owner of the Kansas-Nevada mine — and also,
in later years, as if finding a good mother for his “kids” while on that
political economy excursion into the East was not enough, he cashed in
on that outlay by getting himself elected for the fourth time, to the
legislature — assembly, it is called in Nevada. Then to Reno as Regent
of the University of Nevada. Also, still later, he started a one-man
crusade against gambling. But in Nevada—well, it was slow work.
And, mind you, we ourselves, Frank and I, were at that very time stuck
in a mine gamble which might—and did — keep us feeding the “kitty” for
years before we could know whether or not we would ever be able to pull
out with a winning.
We lighted candles and started down by way of an incline shaft. The
Keystone doubtless had a vertical shaft, I believe back on higher
ground, straight down to the 1,000 foot level, with safety cage,
operated with power. Likely a standard shaft! under state supervision,
similar to the one which Frank and I were eased down to the 1100-foot
level of the Quartette mine at Searchlight—on a day off from our
inspection at Crescent. My cousin, Ella Bristow-Montgom-ery-Walter,
lived in Searchlight, and Joe Walter, her husband, had taken time off
from his barber business to show us around. Frank had seen the manager
of the Quartette, likely through the solicitation of Joe, give me a gold
nugget, worth maybe $10.,
I did not collect these rich specimens for their intrinsic value—but
rather for study and comparison. Our hope for gold at that time lay
at Crescent, between Goodsprings and Searchlight. The specimens
from neighboring camps could be helpful in determining our course of
development.
At the Keystone, we had gone down that incline shaft to the 700-foot
level before the tenderfoot in me began to assert itself. We had walked
down the incline easily enough, then climbed straight down on a ladder
for maybe twenty-five feet—and then repeated by incline and ladder,
gaining distance away from the portal, as well as in depth.
At the 700-foot level, Frank had a sudden notion that we might be
heading for trouble. There were crosscuts going out from the various
levels, and the miners might be working in any one of them. And it was
about time for the shots to be fired. He said we could get out quicker
if we were above the works when the powder smoke began to come out. And
I was positive that I had had enough. The mine was dripping water—and my
nerves were shot.
It gave me a “weak” feeling not unlike I had experienced when Frank took
me about 300 feet back into the tunnel at our lead mine to demonstrate a
drilling, and the firing of a shot. It was late in the afternoon, almost
sundown. Frank said we would have to hurry, as daylight was running out
on us, and we yet had to make our beds out on the dump—that is, find
places where the crushed rock had been trampled down to some semblance
of smoothness. He said he was drilling in soft white lime; that the blue
lime at the contact two hundred feet farther in, for which the tunnel
was projected, and where, it was confidently believed, we would
encounter a big body of lead, was hard as granite. He drilled a hole
sixteen inches deep, then cut a suitable length of fuse, fitted a
dynamite cap to one end, tapped it together lightly with his steel
drill—then shockingly gave that dynamite cap, having a 500-pound
explosive force — which alone has been known to blow a man’s hand off
when hit with a hammer—a final clinch with his teeth. He had a little
tool for clinching the caps, but he didn’t want to waste the time to
fetch it. He “hooted” at my protest of that dangerous performance.
We were about twelve miles from civilization, and I didn’t relish the
prospect of being left alone out there in the night. He slit a stick of
dynamite with his knife—dynamite has been known to explode with rough
handling—but he eased my fears by saying a cow had chewed up a stick
of dynamite without harm. He inserted the capped end of the fuse in the
slit, squeezed it together and dropped it in the hole. He filled the
hole with fine rock drillings, and nonchalantly tamped it with an iron
bar. He lighted the fuse with a match—and said it was time for us to
skedaddle to the portal. No report. Frank said he would go back in the
tunnel and dig it out, and fire the charge. Now, I did protest. I told
him to defer that job until morning. He thought maybe it would be best,
said that a fuse would sometimes hangfire. Dusk was upon us. However,
we found suitable spots for bedding down, and I rolled up in nice clean
blankets I had purchased in Los Angeles the day before—and, using
a “soft” white lime rock for a pillow, slept the sleep of a budding
plutocrat. And, believe it or not, that delayed shot waked me before
dawn. Frank had performed the dangerous task of digging out that
dud, and reloaded the hole. He said, “It was no job for a simpering
tenderfoot to watch. And furthermore, if you will stick around me you’ll
learn something.” And that was no boastful exaggeration.
The Keystone manager took us to the administration building, unlocked a
door, and showed us five tons of very rich gold ore piled in one corner
of the office. A narrow strip of one inch and less—along the hanging
wall of a four-foot vein of $40 ore—shot with particles of pure gold,
averaging $72,000 to the ton, had produced that $360,000 pile of
Keystone wealth.