Castle Valley
Our first camp in this strange valley was made Sunday noon, June 19,
just as we had started to Emery from the top of the Divide. We found a
beautiful little grove of trees, mostly cottonwood, willows, and
quaking asp, which was filled with wild roses. The roses were
everywhere and we called it Rosedale Camp. We spent three hours here
and then drove about ten miles farther down into the valley, following
a small alkali stream, and camped some fifteen or seventeen miles from
Emery.
We met no one on the road, but just as we made camp a man came along
from Emery with a team and buggy, looking for a ranch house he said
was on a branch trail somewhere back of us. While he was evidently
lost he said he had lunch and horse feed, and if he didn’t find it in
the morning he would back track to Emery. I asked him why he started
alone, and he said he had been there once before and thought he could
find it, but that evidently it was farther than he had thought it was.
I guess he was a wool man and was buying from the sheepmen, although
he did not say so and we did not ask. It is surprising how much you
guess in this country and how few questions you ask. In making camp we
found we had only enough water in our barrels for camp use, so I took
the horses over to the alkali stream to drink.
We had by this time got down into the valley proper, which was really
a mesa surrounded by mountains, and about as weird-looking a place as
could be imagined. The mountains were sheer cliffs on the valley side,
and in the sunset their shapes and colors were fantastic. As I rode
over to the stream I began to think of fairy tales about hobgoblins
and giants, but was rudely brought out of my dreams by arriving
unexpectedly at the arroyo, where it was about two hundred yards wide,
with walls as perpendicular as those of a house, and about fifty to
seventy-five feet deep. The stream--well, it appeared along the middle
of the sandy bottom in spots and I despaired of getting a horse down
there or of getting enough water for three horses, even if I could
find a place to get down, as from where I stood the stream looked
about the size of a lead pencil and the little spots of water held
about a panful each.
It is surprising, however, what you really can do if you have to, and
I knew instinctively that I was going to find a way to get those
horses down that perpendicular wall, and water them somehow. I
dismounted and started along the edge looking for a way down, and
found it, over the roots of an old cottonwood tree and into a wash,
where I slid Kate down, and then scooped out a hole in the miniature
stream from which, when it filled, she drank. Then I got her to climb
up and slid another down after much persuasion, and so later the
third, but was careful not to let them drink too much, as the water
was pretty strong.
By the time I got back to camp it was nearly dark and Doc and Bob were
waiting supper for me. We find our fireless cooker and kerosene stove
to be real luxuries in this sort of a country. We really live high
(comparatively speaking); our appetites are always good and Bob rarely
gets up anything that doesn’t taste fine. Just now our larder contains
honey, beans, bread, eggs, oatmeal, tea, bacon, prunes, seeded
raisins, and crackers.
We turned in early as usual and were up before it was really light.
Doc missed getting a shot at a gray wolf right near camp. He said he
took it for a boulder at first and so paid no attention to it; when
too late, he saw it take shape and steal away.
[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF CASTLE VALLEY]
We left camp at six-thirty. The trail was on the west side of the
valley and right under the mountains, which gave us a good opportunity
to study them. The scenery was really weird. The mountains took the
shape of castles, not imaginary castles, but real ones. A painter
could not paint anything more natural, and they were all different.
Each castle stood guard over its particular part of the valley, and
all day and for several days we had a never-ending source of
entertainment in this sort of scenery. It was on such an immense scale
and combined with the magic colors of the desert country, that we were
continually gazing at it and not at the desert underfoot, and so
missed a good many chances to shoot coyotes, wolves, and mountain
lions that were invariably dropping out of sight into a gulley or
behind the brush, about the time our attention was called to them.
One particularly exciting incident happened before we were really
started this morning. In crossing a wash the wagon had to make a
detour, but Bob on Dixie rode straight across, and after topping a
rise of ground he got off and sat down on a rock to wait for us to
catch up. As we came over the rise I saw Dixie, but could not see Bob
on account of the brush. She was browsing on the bushes. Just beyond
her I saw a mountain lion, right out in the open, quietly stealing
down toward her, evidently not seeing Bob and thinking there might be
a colt there it could kill.
The speed with which I threw on the brake and called to Doc to get his
Winchester sort of flustrated Doc and also flustrated the lion. It
started off on a trot at right angles down the mesa as Doc pulled out
his 30-30 and got ready for action. His first shot just grazed its
back at about three hundred yards, and then the fun began. Bob jumped
into view to see what had happened; the lion started for Colorado. Not
in any reasonable manner, however. It seemed to be shot out of a gun,
and Doc swung his Winchester and pumped three more shots after it. All
of them seemed to be in the general direction the lion was going, but
they only served to make him swerve and run faster, if that were
possible.
When at last he had disappeared from sight in the dim distance,--he
actually ran out of sight on bare ground,--and the smoke had blown
away, Bob called out, “What was it?”
Doc said, “Didn’t you see it?”
“Well,” said Bob, “I am not sure whether I did or not.”
I called over to Bob and said, “I saw it start anyway, and what you
saw must have been what I saw start.”
“Gosh all hemlock!”--or something like that--I think Doc remarked; “I
never saw anything with four legs run as fast before,”--and I am sure
he never did, nor any one else.
I could not help laughing, although Doc seemed quite chagrined to
think he had not killed the lion. I admitted he had missed the first
shot, but after that no bullet could have caught up to the beast, no
matter how well aimed.
After this episode nothing especially interesting happened, and we
soon reached Emery, not quite three days from Salina. We must have
made about thirty miles yesterday afternoon and this morning, so we
feel quite satisfied that we did not go a hundred miles to get around
that canyon, although I guess we were more lucky than wise.
The little Mormon settlement called Emery is scattered all over the
mesa, and has plenty of water to irrigate from five to eight hundred
acres, which is enough to support the town. We stopped at the hotel
for dinner, just to see what it was like, and, while we had plenty to
eat, we seemed to create quite a stir. We were the only guests, and
unexpected at that, so the two girls who had been left in charge while
the old folks were on a trip to some railroad town, were quite a bit
flustered. We stayed here until four-thirty in the afternoon, walking
about and looking the natives over, and incidentally waiting for the
postmaster to show up. In these little, out-of-the-way places the
postoffice is liable to be run by somebody who appears for duty only
when the mail comes in or goes out, unless he is sent for.
I put in part of the time trying to make a horse trade in the street
in front of the store. I didn’t want to trade horses, but I made the
other fellow think he had come very near trading me a bay mare, about
Dixie’s size, for Kate, and so I got a line on what I could buy her
for; but Doc thought her a trifle too small, so when the postman
arrived we disagreed on price, and parted.
After calling for our mail we started on. We had driven only about
five miles when we came to some grass, which we never pass without
taking toll of, and as it was about camping time anyway we turned the
horses loose to graze while we made camp.
Tuesday, June 21, was quite a day. In the first place, we met a big
gray wolf about one hour from camp and I shot him through the flanks
with Doc’s 30-30, but missed him with two more shots before he dropped
into a ravine. He was bleeding so badly that he did not go far, but as
we were in a hurry and he was working up toward the mountains we
concluded to let him die in peace, and so did not follow him far,
although his trail was painfully plain.
Next we came to a field of white poppies. From a gray wolf’s bloody
trail to white poppies does not seem odd in this desert country,
although now that I am writing it the change seems rather startling.
The California poppy we admired greatly, but this immense field of
white ones seemed, if anything, more beautiful.
In two or three miles more we came to the top of a hill overlooking
the town of Ferron. Here we had a splendid view of the mountains to
the west, with a Moorish castle looking down on us, gray buttes below
us, and in the distance the town of Ferron with its bright green
alfalfa field, Carolina poplars, and cottonwood trees. This was such a
grand color scheme that I took a picture of it, forgetting that color
does not show in a photograph and that immense distances are beyond
duplication by the ordinary lens, at least, and so got a very
unsatisfactory picture.
Passing through Ferron we made camp by an irrigation ditch, under a
cottonwood tree, and did some laundry work, which was put to dry while
we ate lunch, after which we drove on into Castledale, stopping at Jim
Jeff’s Camp House, making twenty miles for the day. Here we decided to
stay a day and rest the horses, so after feeding them all we turned
Bess and Kate into his pasture, keeping Dixie up so we could take
better care of her neck, which was quite sore.
Castledale we found to be the largest town in Castle Valley. There is
Emery on Muddy Creek, Ferron on Ferron Creek, and Castledale on
Cottonwood Creek, and beyond is a town called Huntington on Huntington
Creek. These creeks or brooks are all supposed to flow into the
Cottonwood farther down, but each little town takes most of the water
into its irrigation ditches as the water leaves the mountains, and so
very little of it ever gets far on its way to the valley below, except
in freshet times. Any one expecting to find water in these creeks
below the towns is usually a tenderfoot, and needs a water barrel, and
some good advice. We did not have the advice, but we had the water
barrel and so far have not suffered for good water.
Our camp was in Jim Jeff’s yard. He had a house for the accommodation
of freighters, but we preferred the ground. However, we did make away
with a great many of his eggs and some green stuff from the garden.
We put in the next day, Wednesday, cleaning up, writing, and making a
few purchases. I remembered that this was the day my sister was to
have been married, and here I was, fifty miles from the railroad in a
desert town, unable to telephone or telegraph, and I had expected to
be able to send her a message. Doc and I were walking down the road to
the store, when on the side porch of a house I saw the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company’s long distance sign nailed to a post.
“Hold on,” I said, “there is a familiar look to that sign; just you go
on and I will follow it up and see whether it is going to do me any
good or not.”
So into the house I went. Here I found a girl who was running all the
telephone business for the town and surrounding country. She said the
line ran to some town on the railroad, the name of which I didn’t
catch, but that didn’t interest me. What I wanted to know was if I
could talk to the station agent at this town, and when I found I
could, I said, “Well, you just call him up quick. I want to say
something to him real sudden.” In about an hour I got that message off
to my sister, which shows how suddenly things happen in that country.
When I came out of the house I found Doc had made the necessary
purchases at the store and was patiently waiting on the porch. We had
left Bob at Jeff’s place, cleaning up, and so went back and helped.
Our day here was not especially interesting. The town has about five
to six hundred people scattered about over quite a large area. During
the afternoon, however, things began to liven up. Young fellows from a
few miles out began riding in to Jeff’s and putting up their horses
and changing clothes. It seemed such a funny performance that I asked
Jeff what was up. “Just a dance,” he said, and walked off huffy-like.
I couldn’t see why that should bother him, but I found out afterward
that he was too much of a dyed-in-the-wool old Mormon to appreciate
the beneficial results to the young folks of indulging in a
free-for-all dance.
He had lived here thirty-one years and had ten children. Incidentally,
I might say one wife. We did not see anywhere any evidence of polygamy
and I guess that it is a dead issue. His house, one of the best in
town, was brick, and had running water in it. He had all kinds of fowl
around the yard, including peacocks and hens. Five miles east toward
Green River he had a ranch of several thousand acres; so on the whole
he was quite a substantial citizen, and was able to give us some good
advice about our trail between here and Green River.
Just as a sample of some of the instructions we had been getting from
the natives _en route_, it may be interesting to give Jim Jeff’s
instructions as to how we were to reach Green River. They were
something like this, but not _verbatim_: “It is about sixty miles over
there and not a house on the trail, and on account of the dry weather
(it hasn’t rained here in three months) probably all the water holes
are dry except Huntington Creek, which is alkali. Don’t drink any
yourself and don’t let your horses drink much. I guess, to be on the
safe side, you better plan not to find any water, so fill both your
barrels and be careful to get through on that, because, although there
_may be_ water the horses can drink thirty miles from here, you may
not find it as it is off the trail, and if you depend on it and miss
it you will be awfully dry before you get to Green River.”
Then he drew us a diagram of the trail, told us where the bad places
were, wished us good luck, and said good-bye. We turned in for an
early start in the morning. That start was so early we met the young
folks coming home from the dance.
It was Thursday morning, the twenty-third of June, that we filled our
barrels and started on our sixty-mile stretch to Green River. We
crossed Castle Valley to the east, climbed up on the mesa after
crossing Huntington Creek, and made about fourteen miles before we
stopped for lunch. From one of the benches we had a splendid view of
the whole of Castle Valley and could see sixty miles south, and forty
miles north, from this point. We picked out the pass over the
mountains to the south where we came into the valley, by the
snow-capped mountain above it, and could see the range of mountains
distinctly forty miles north, and our row of castles to the southwest.
To the southeast lay some barren-looking peaks called “Robbers’
Roost,” where Bassett and his gang held forth for so long. It was a
hard but fascinating country, but Bob brought me to earth as I stood
admiring the scene by saying, “Some society and a little water would
change this for the better a whole lot, wouldn’t it?” I didn’t say
anything, but thought the water would certainly help, but as for the
society I preferred the prospect without habitations, which would take
away the charm of it for me.
Starting on over a rolling country at about four thousand feet
elevation we met, fortunately, around 3:30 P. M., two men in a buggy,
driving one horse and leading another. They told us it was about
fifteen miles to the water hole, that there was still a barrel of
water there, that we could find it by watching the trail after we had
gone about fifteen miles, and that we would see where they had turned
out of the trail, if we looked sharp, They told us the water was not
where they had turned out, as they had missed the place, but that it
was a quarter of a mile farther on, as they had afterward discovered.
They told us also when we came to the forks of the trail to take the
right fork; that was all, but it was enough.
It would seem like a difficult problem to tell when you have gone
fifteen miles in such a country, but we could calculate that about as
easily as we could tell the time of day by the sun. Having lost my
watch in the early part of the trip I had discovered I didn’t need it
anyway, and was saved the trouble of winding it every night. In
calling off the time to Doc and Bob I found that I agreed with their
watches almost exactly, although once I missed it by fifteen minutes;
but I am not sure I was not right even then.
So it was on the trail. We knew how many hours we had been traveling
and could tell to almost a certainty how many miles we were making per
hour, and thus had no difficulty in telling how far we had gone.
When we had climbed to the top of another rise Doc said, “Well, it is
four o’clock and we are fifteen miles from water. We will make about
five miles more to-day, and then we can water the horses to-morrow
morning at that water hole, about 10 A. M., and just let them do
without water for breakfast.” That sounded about right to me, but I
wasn’t sure about the 10 A. M. schedule. I thought we could make ten
miles before 10 A. M., but we carried this programme out almost to the
letter. We drove on for about five miles and camped for the night,
having made about twenty-two miles of the sixty that day.
The next day, Friday, the twenty-fourth, was a long, hard day. The
horses all did well, but it was up hill and down over rocks and
through heavy sand, and several times we had to use all the horses at
once. About nine-thirty Doc rode Dixie on ahead, looking for the place
where the buggy had turned out, and when we saw him waiting for us by
the side of the trail we knew he had found the water; in fact, he had
gone right to it with the directions we had received, but without
those tell-tale wheel tracks a quarter of a mile from the water, I do
not believe we would have found it.
The water was down in a miniature canyon, in a bowl-shaped rock, where
stock could not get to it, or the sun’s rays reach it for any length
of time, and this rock bowl held, when full, probably twenty barrels
of water. The little stream had long ago gone dry, but here out of
sight were still a few barrels of water left. It took us quite a while
to get the horses down over the rocks close to the water, and it was a
case of bucket brigade to get it out to them. When we had them back at
the wagon again I noticed that it was ten o’clock; so we did find the
water before ten, but I didn’t think there was enough difference in
time to call Doc’s attention to it.
After lunch, about 4 P. M., we passed a wash that looked wet to me and
I asked Doc if he wouldn’t explore it, while the horses rested in the
shade of a cottonwood tree. He came back presently with the
information that there was good water about “half a quarter” above, so
we unhitched and all went up, and found water running in the bed of
the stream for about four feet in one place and about ten feet in
another. It was just a case of one of those underground,
bottom-side-up streams having a leak in the top, and the water had
come up through. The find made us feel safe on the water question. We
still had water in our barrels; had found water twice for the horses,
and just where Jeff had told us we _might_ find it; and felt quite
“sot up” over it.
[Illustration: THE CLAY BUTTES NEAR GREEN RIVER]
We camped at night in the dry bed of a stream, the bottom of which was
covered with a white alkali deposit, that looked like snow and was
nearly one-half inch thick. We concluded this must be Soda Creek and
that we had made only twenty miles during the day, so that we were
still about eighteen miles from Green River.
This is certainly a hard, rough country, a succession of canyons and
mountains, with a variety of colors in the sand and rocks. We have not
met a soul or seen a living thing, save some cattle this evening in
the creek bed. Not a thing lives here, it would seem, but a coyote,
now and then a skylark, and a few lizards and horned toads. There is
plenty of grass evidently earlier in the season, but the cattle are
now mostly moved out on account of lack of water. Those we saw this
evening were probably overlooked, or else have a few alkali holes
still available somewhere near. It is surprising how strong water the
cattle can stand when they are used to it, but if it doesn’t rain soon
in this country even the birds will have to leave.
We were up the next morning at four-thirty and were under way at six,
reaching Green River at 11 A. M., over a variety of roads and through
the most desolate stretch of country I have ever seen. The sandy
desert was cheerful in comparison. When we came down from among the
bare clay buttes the trail ran along a little stream and we began to
see signs of life,--a coyote first, then a queer bird, trying to find
water enough to swim in. It was some species of the duck family, but
we could not find a name for it. It looked like a cross between a mud
hen and a duck, was gray in color and had a short bill. It had
probably come up from Green River and was lost.
As we crossed the railroad track coming into Green River we passed a
big sign board on which was printed:
“FOR SALE 7,000 acres
of the best fruit land in the world
by a Dam Site.”
After we had spent two days and a half in that town we concluded the
printer had probably by mistake used the word _of_ when he should have
used _not_.
We found the river was not fordable here, but that there was a ferry
which would take us across if we wanted to go to-day; to-morrow it
would stop running. So we took the last chance and crossed, camping on
the other side on a bare bench about two hundred yards from the river.
There is one store and a corral here, and the place is called Elgin.
Obtaining permission to turn our horses into the corral we were free
to go over the railroad bridge to Green River, get our mail, inspect
the town, and buy a few provisions.
Our trip through Castle Valley was over, and we were once more in a
railroad town, so we decided to stay a couple of days and give the
horses the rest of which they were much in need.