William Caruthers - Loafing Along Death Valley Trails

For a man who had found compensation for such luck, there is no defeat. Certainly his philosophy seemed to meet his needs and that is the function of philosophy.

It was cool in the late evening and he made a fire, chucked one end of an eight-foot log into the stove and put a chair under the protruding end. Bill asked why he didn’t cut the log. “Listen,” Blackie said, “you’re one of 100 million reasons why this country is misgoverned. Why should I sweat over that log when a fire will do the job?.. That book? Just some fellow’s plan for a perfect world. I hope I’ll not be around when they have it.

“The town of Calico? It was a live one. When John McBryde and Lowery Silver discovered the white metal there, a lot of us desert rats got in the big money. In the first seven years of the Eighties it was bonanza and in the eighth the town was dead.”

But the stories of fortunes made in Mule and Odessa Canyons were of less importance to him than a habit of the town judge. “Chewed tobacco all the time and swallowed the juice, ‘If a fellow’s guts can’t stand it,’ he would say, ‘he ought to quit,’ and he’d clap a fine on anybody who spat in his court.

“Never knew Jack Dent, did you? Englishman. Now there was a drinking man. Said his only ambition was to die drunk. One pay day he got so cockeyed he couldn’t stand, so his pals laid him on a pool table and went on with their drinking. Every time they ordered, Jack hollered for his and somebody would take it over and pour it down him. ‘Keep ’em comin’,’ he says. ‘If I doze off, just pry my jaws open and pour it down.’

“The boys took him at his word. Every time they drank, they took a drink to Jack. When the last round came they took Jack a big one. They tried to pry his lips open but the lips didn’t give. Jack Dent’s funeral was the biggest ever held in the town.

“Bill was telling you I made a million there, and every now and then I hear of somebody telling somebody else I made a million in Africa. And another in the Yukon. The truth is, what little I’ve got came out of a hole in a whiskey barrel instead of a mine shaft.

“A few years back a strike was made down in the Avawatz that started a baby gold rush. I joined it. A fellow named Gypsum came in with a barrel of whiskey, thinking there’d be a town, but it didn’t turn out that way. Gypsum had no trouble disposing of his liquor and stayed around to do a little prospecting. One day when I was starting for Johannesburg, he asked me to deliver a message to a bartender there. Gypsum had a meat cleaver in his hand and was sharpening it on a butcher’s steel to cut up a mountain sheep he’d killed.

“‘Just ask for Klondike and tell him to send my stuff. He’ll understand. Tell him if he doesn’t send it, I’m coming after it.’

“I didn’t know at the time that Gypsum had killed three men in honest combat and that one of them had been dispatched with a meat cleaver.

“I delivered the message verbatim. Klondike looked a bit worried. ‘What’s Gypsum doing?’ he asked. ‘When I left,’ I said, ‘he was sharpening a meat cleaver.’ Klondike turned white. ‘I’ll have it ready before you go.’

“When I called later, he told me he’d put Gypsum’s stuff in the back of my car. When I got back to camp and Gypsum came to my tent to ask about it, I told him to get it out of the car, which was parked a few feet away. Gypsum went for it and in a moment I heard him cussing. I looked out and he was trying to shoulder a heavy sack. Before I could get out to help him, the sack got away from him and burst at his feet. The ground was covered with nickles, dimes, quarters, halves. ‘There’s another sack.’ Gypsum said. ‘The son of a bitch has sent me $2500 in chicken feed. Just for spite.’

“Because it was a nuisance, Gypsum loaned it to the fellows about, all of whom were his friends. They didn’t want it but took it just to accommodate Gypsum. There was nothing to spend it for. Somebody started a poker game and I let ’em use my tent because it was the largest. I rigged up a table by sawing Gypsum’s whiskey barrel in two and nailing planks over the open end. Every night after supper they started playing. I furnished light and likker and usually I set out grub. It didn’t cost much but somebody suggested that in order to reimburse me, two bits should be taken out of every jackpot. A hole was slit in the top. It was a fast game and the stakes high. It ran for weeks every evening and the Saturday night session ended Monday morning.

“Of course some were soon broke and they began to borrow from one another. Finally everybody was broke and all the money was in my kitty. I took the top off the barrel and loaned it to the players, taking I.O.U.’s, I had to take the top off a dozen times and when it was finally decided there was no pay dirt in the Avawatz, I had a sack full of I.O.U.’s.

“Once I tried to figure out how many times that $2500 was loaned, but I gave up. I learned though, why these bankers pick up a pencil and start figuring the minute you start talking. They are on the right end of the pencil.”

Early the next morning while Bill was servicing my car for the trip ahead, with some tactful mention of handy gadgets he had for sale, we noticed Blackie coming with a man who ran largely to whiskers. “That’s old Cloudburst Pete,” Bill told me. “Another old timer who has shuffled all over this country.”

“How did he get that moniker?” I asked.

“One time Pete came in here and was telling us fellows about a narrow escape he had from a cloudburst over in the Panamint. Pete said the cloud was just above him and about to burst and would have filled the canyon with a wall of water 90 feet high. A city fellow who had stopped for gas, asked Pete how come he didn’t get drowned. Pete took a notion the fellow was trying to razz him. ‘Well, Mister, if you must know, I lassoed the cloud, ground-hitched it and let it bust…’”

After greeting Pete, Bill asked if he’d been walking all night.

“Naw,” Pete said. “Started around 11 o’clock, I reckon. Not so bad before sunup. Be hell going back. But I didn’t come here to growl about the weather. I want some powder so I can get started. Found color yesterday. Looks like I’m in the big money.”

“Fine,” Bill said. “I heard you’ve been laid up.”

“Oh, I broke a leg awhile back. Fell in a mine shaft. Didn’t amount to much.”

“I know about that, but didn’t you get hurt in a blast since then?”

“Oh that – yeh. Got blowed out of a 20-foot hole. Three-four ribs busted, the doc said. Come to think of it, believe he mentioned a fractured collar bone. Wasn’t half as bad as last week.”

“Good Lord … what happened last week?”

“That crazy Cyclone Thompson. You know him … he pulled a stope gate and let five-six tons of muck down on me. Nobody knew it – not even Cyclone. Wore my fingers to the bone scratching out. Look at these hands…”

Pete held up his mutilated hands. “They’ll heal but bigod – that pair of brand new double-stitched overalls won’t.”

“Well,” Bill chuckled, “you know where the powder is. Go in and get it.”

Bill and Blackie remained to see me off, each with a friendly word of advice. “Just follow the wheel tracks,” Bill said, as I climbed into my car and Blackie added: “Keep your eyes peeled for the cracker box signs along the edge of the road. You’ll see ’em nailed to a stake and stuck in the ground.”

A moment later I was headed into a silence broken only by the whip of sage against the car. Ahead was the glimmer of a dry lake and in the distance a great mass of jumbled mountains that notched the pale skies. Beyond – what?

I never dreamed then that for twenty-five years I would be poking around in those deceiving hills.