Chapter 10

AFTER TUCSON CAME YUMA, where I made my stand for seven months, having run out of both funds and the incentive for further travel. As a town just across the Colorado from the terminus of the Southern Pacific railroad, it had closer connections with the Coast than with the region of my recent experiences. As for myself, I met the needs of the moment by practicing a modest amount of law and writing for the Yuma Sentinel.

Then going through newspaper exchanges for something worth borrowing, I found a small item about prospectors trooping to a place called Dead Warrior, which was referred to as a settlement. The discovery made me restless, but I stayed put until my interest was rearoused by an article in the Tucson Citizen. According to the excited author of this piece of journalism, the mines of the Dead Warrior region bade fair to cast the wealth found by Messrs. Cortez and Pizarro in the shade.

Western papers were full of such stories. Reporters were always playing up some trifling stampede as though it were a second California gold rush. Up to that point my reason was in the saddle; but my personal connection with the place in question put reason at a disadvantage. Yuma was having its own boom times in expectation of the railroad jumping east across the river. I was just beginning to be fairly well established in a place which promised better fortune by the month. There was no sense in leaving a known good thing for what would doubtless turn out to be something a reporter found in the bottom of his glass. After telling myself that for three days, I spent the fourth plugging holes in my stagecoach and painting over the stain left by the heart’s blood of the Apache.

The place where he had died was not as I had left it. Long before I swung away from the creek, still full of water that early in the spring, I could see tents dotting the valley and in silhouette upon the big shelf of land I remembered. At the north end of this, as it turned out, was the main settlement: a cluster of canvas with a focal point in the shape of a crossroads dedicated to business.

While I was refreshing myself at the Glory Hole — an open-faced wickiup whose saloon furnishings consisted of the house sign and planks stretched across whiskey barrels — I saw a familiar figure trudging through the dust. “Hello, Duncan,” I called. “Let me buy you a drink.”

The mining engineer remembered me, but before accepting my invitation he pulled out his watch. “I guess I can consider myself off duty at this hour,” he told me. “Are you here prospecting like all the rest, Carruthers?”

“I’m just looking things over at present.” I felt better about having indulged my curiosity after discovering that a big mining company had thought it worth while to send down a representative. “Do you think they have anything here that’s worth building a town around?”

“Towns aren’t my concern,” he said, and I could tell from his expression that he thought I had been trying to pump him. “All I know is that Pan-Western thought it advisable to have a survey made.”

“Well, how does it look to you in a general way?” His caution struck me as significant, and I tried for an approach he might not think worth guarding against. “Suppose a man wanted to invest in some business other than mining. Do you think he’d be wise to stay?”

Duncan sipped his whiskey. “I don’t like to give advice on anything but mining, and I’m paid to give that only to officers of the company, Carruthers, but it wouldn’t astonish me if business here in Dead Warrior would be better next year than it is now.”

Considerably impressed, I left my team and coach at a rope corral which advertised itself to be a livery stable. Then, for lack of any other immediate course of action, I began inquiring for Seth Potter.

Everybody knew him, including the proprietor of the tent restaurant where I paid two dollars for a thirty-cent meal, but I got several wrong directions before I was given the correct one. When I eventually found him, the old mountain man was seated on a box in front of a ramada sheltering his bedding and a litter of mining equipment. There were eight or ten men loafing in the twilight with him, but their function appeared to be that of interlocutors. The main burden of the talk was carried by Potter, who had a jauntier bearing than when I had last seen him.

I had to wait for a suitable break in the conversation. “Do you remember me, Seth?”

He had the air, as he turned to me, of a personage accustomed to be known by people whose names he could not himself recall. In a moment, however, he had risen to his feet and was shaking my hand.

“Well, how are you, boy? I was beginnin’ to be afeared some Injun had lifted your hair when you didn’t show up sooner. You want to see your claim? No, I suppose it’s too late for that now. I’ll show it to you the first thing in the mornin’, but I guess I done forgot which one is yourn at that. Let’s take a look now.”

Producing a notebook which was in far better condition than the one he had had before, he began to flip over the pages. I was both touched and embarrassed. Although I had recalled his promise to file in my name, I thought I must have forfeited title by my continued absence.

“I have no right to any claim,” I protested.

“Did you hear that, men?” Potter turned me around to face the assembled stampeders and slapped me on the chest with his unoccupied hand. “Old Baltimore here says he ain’t got no rights to a claim. Now I want to tell you something about Baltimore.”

He did, too, though the things he said had small kinship with the facts as I remembered them. “Baltimore and me was out prospectin’ here,” he began his narrative. “It didn’t look so good to me, but he says, ‘Seth, this coon’s got the feelin’ that here’s where we’ll make our strike.’”

Having endowed me with the powers of a divining rod, the old fellow next proceeded to assume his own preferred role of Indian fighter. “Well, we split up and begun to look over the washes for gold sign, but I hadn’t gone very fur when I see I was being trailed.”

Most of his audience must have heard that part of the story before, but one of them did the right thing. “Was it an Indian?”

“Son, it was the biggest Injun I ever see, and I’ve fit redskins for forty-five year. But I just kept studyin’ a chunk of rock and whistlin’, though watchin’ him out of the corner of my eye until that buck — an Apache, I could tell he was, from the way his moccasins was made — snook up to where he was just about to jump me with his knife; then, I catched up my rifle and blowed him into the happy huntin’ ground, firm’ from the hip.”

While I marveled, Potter brought me back on the scene. “Well, Baltimore heard the shot, naturally, and when he come runnin’ and see the Injun, he says, ‘What’ll we do with the red son of a bitch, stick him up on poles?’ ‘Some Injuns would take to that,’ I says, ‘but not Apaches; and as long as there ain’t nobody else around to look after him, we might as well do the square thing and plant him, just like his folks would do.’ So we done it, and it was while we was diggin’ that Apache buck’s grave that we struck gold, just like Baltimore said we would.”

Having concluded his account, Seth winked at the others, then jerked his thumb toward me. “And after that he says he ain’t got no right to a claim.”

He showed me the Mosby Carruthers claim the next morning, although there wasn’t much to see. There were 160 acres of land stretched beneath what was now officially known as Beaver Lodge Butte. A couple of miles away I could see the main group of tents. Nearer at hand the scenery consisted of ledges cropping out above the shrubbery.

“You won’t have no trouble with claim jumpers,” Potter said, “because I’m sort of runnin’ this camp, you know.”

It didn’t look like anything worth stealing; but it might be valuable, and in any case I saw no way of refusing his kindness. “I appreciate this a great deal, Seth. And now you say I must prove upon it?”

“Sure. I filed it in your name, but to keep it you’ve got to make like you’re workin’ it or fixin’ to. The easiest thing is to camp here and go tell the man what you’re doin’.”

Neighboring tents and wickiups showed that others were following this procedure. “What man for choice?” I demanded.

“The mine register fellow. There’s one right here in Dead Warrior, on account of there’s so much goin’ on here.”

Upon returning to what everybody referred to as “town,” I found a tent with a sign saying, “Deputy Registrar of Mines” among the welter of canvas. The public servant officiating was bending over a ledger, exactly as he had done when I last saw him. I sat down on the empty box across the table from him and lighted my pipe.

“What happened to Powder Keg, Sam?”

Wheeler peered at me through his glasses, then grinned. “That was the biggest bust since Vesuvius blew its stack and fried Pompeii in hot lava. I won’t sadden you with the details; but when reports of this place reached us I skinned down to Tucson and got myself this job, so I could really find out what was what this time. How long have you been here, Baltimore?”

“I’m one of the oldest inhabitants returning to his native haunts,” I told him. “The nonsense seems doomed to be fixed in tradition, so you might as well hear it from me. It was my uncanny mineralogical insight which enabled old Potter to make his earth-shaking discovery.”

“So you’re in with the old boy?” Arising, Wheeler bent his chunky body at the waist. “Congratulations!”

“I’m not in with anybody.” My pipe had gone dead, and I had to strike another match. “And as for Potter, I know he thinks he has untold buried riches, but we’ve all been there before.”

“I don’t think we have.”

Coming from a man in his position, the words made me sit up. “Is it really big?”

“If it isn’t, I’m not the only one that’s being fooled,” he retorted. “Old Seth’s found some backers from Plutoville, or I don’t know capital when I see it ambling around on the hoof.”

That Potter had business connections of any sort was something I found difficult to believe. “If it’s worth anything, the moneylenders will probably get it for two plugs of tobacco and a beaver trap.”

“Toss me your tobacco, and I’ll tell you why not to believe it.” Sam got his pipe going, then put his feet on the table. “He may have no more business acumen than a straddlebug, but his sister from Illinois sent her son — as slick a young horse trader as was ever sired among the pumpkins by a passing Yankee peddler — to look after the family’s interests. He and Moneybags just left for the East to wrap up some kind of deal.”

“I saw our old acquaintance Duncan,” I offered. “He grudgingly admitted that he thought there would be a permanent operation here.”

Wheeler laughed. “Duncan tries to be stone face, but when he sees high-grade ore, he can’t help slavering like a skunk downwind from a chicken yard. He could make himself a fortune if he wasn’t born to be an organization’s sad-eyed and faithful mutt.”

“Maybe we’ll all be sleeping on gold pillows pretty soon,” I said, after I had learned from Sam just what to do in order to acquire unchallenged title to my claim, “but how are people making a living in the meantime?”

“Oh, there’s placer and small shaft mining, and panning down by the creek. The rest are doing everything from hauling in planks from the mountains, with which to timber the walls of Rome, to peddling water that only a cattleman would think of dipping sheep in. They tell me that the two men in camp who shave use whiskey. That’s cheaper than water, incidentally.”

Having purchased a bucket of water that morning, I nodded. “I’ve got a stage I’d like to operate, Sam.”

“Then you haven’t got any problem.” From the way he took his feet off the table, I saw that he was going to make me a proposition. “Look; I am old and wilier than the serpent, and I’ve been wilier than usual since coming to Arizona. It’ll be a cinch to get enough purchasing commissions to make your trips into Tucson worth while, and you can scare up all the eastbound passengers you can hold, once you let it be known that you’re serving the new wonder camp. You still need one thing, though, and that is either I or me. Give me a percentage for being your agent here, and I’ll see that you get the mail contract, as soon as the post office is ready to go with regular deliveries.”

Somewhere in the course of my conversation with him I had lost my skepticism about both the bonanza and the dependent community. “Why didn’t Dick Jackson come along with you?” I demanded, when we had agreed upon the terms. “It isn’t like him to miss out on a good thing like this. And what about the others of the old poker crowd?”

“Tom Cary got himself a job mule skinning for the army, and Jim Powers drifted up north somewhere,” Wheeler said, “but I think we can count on Dick. The deal was that I was supposed to let him know if this place looked like Dame Rumor had a pantalette to stand in. I finally got off a letter to him the other day, and as soon as he gets it, you can expect any cloud of dust to turn into Jackson.”

The camp did not look like a zany collection of makeshift dwellings, when I stepped outside. It had rather the air of the temporary headquarters of a band united for high enterprise.

Creeping upon me was the feeling that I myself was a man of mark for having the farsightedness and pioneer daring to be at the spot where fortunes were in the making. I tried to tell myself that optimism had better mark time, pending developments. Yet even the scenery quashed such appeals to caution. The immense stretches of empty landscape around Dead Warrior no longer looked like the end of creation but the beginning of it.

Everybody I met on the dusty thoroughfare known as Apache Street seemed to share my sense of exhilaration and general good humor. Not wanting to argue with a rattlesnake which was slithering across the street, I sidestepped into the path of a burly prospector. I was the one who should have apologized, and the knife scar on his face showed that he wasn’t always in a peaceful frame of mind; but instead of growling at me, he gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder.

“Didn’t look where I was goin’,” he said.

“Where would anybody be going at this time of day?” I wondered. He had started to move on, but he hesitated pursuant to that remark. “It must be ten o’clock,” I stated.

“ ’Tis at that.” He was grinning now.

“I just got here last night, so I’m not up on all the local customs,” I went on, “but at every other camp I’ve ever been in ten o’clock was first drink time.”

“Not countin’ the one before breakfast,” he was careful to remind me.

“That’s just the one to clean the teeth with,” I corrected him on a point of order. “That’s the zero drink, not the first.”

“Ten o’clock’s about right here, though if you was a half hour early nobody wouldn’t say nothin’.” Hairy fingers closed around mine as he gave me that assurance. “I’m Short-fuse Rochelle.”

The Glory Hole was already crowded with other devotees of first drink time. On another corner of Apache and Beaver Lodge Streets, however, a place which hadn’t been there the night before was preparing to open for business.

“You’re my first customers,” the landlord said, weighting down one end of the plank bar with a large chunk of rock. “These are on me, gents, and I’ll have one with you for luck.”

“What’re you callin’ the shebang?” Short-fuse asked, when we had all nodded and snapped the whiskey down.

“Well, I’ve been giving that a lot of thought.” The proprietor’s round, good-humored face wrinkled with more brain tremors while he was speaking. “My name’s Hamilton Gay — though I’m always called Ham — so I figured I’d maybe call it the Gay Palace. Of course, it don’t look like no palace now, but I’ve got to think of the future, you see. What do you fellows think about that for a handle?”

Western saloonkeepers habitually adopted names which were about as suitable as pink ribbons around a keg of black powder. Rustlers Roost and the bars at Shakespeare had been exceptions to the rule, to which I had by then become so accustomed that I no longer noticed the incongruities.

“It sounds all right,” I assented. “Make it three again.”

“ ’Tain’t got no feel of the camp,” Short-fuse objected. The long scar framing his eye was turned toward me, as he pointed kitty-corner across the street. “Glory Hole does, now. It fits Dead Warrior, because the whole damn place is a glory hole from butte to crick and back again. This town sits on enough gold to buy Africa and China with, if anybody wanted ’em, and you can’t spit on a rock without splatterin’ tobacco juice on maybe a hundred dollars. ‘Palace’ is all right for most camps, but you’d ought to have somethin’ special for a real jumpin’ Jesus of a bonanza like we got here.”

“You’re right,” Gay said, but agreement only filled him with gloom. “What name could I use, though? That fellow over there’s got the best name to give the idea of both a bonanza and a place to hang out; and anyhow I don’t want to sound like I’m just copying him. A man that’s going to build up as big a business as I aim to starts off wrong if he tries walking in the other guy’s tracks.”

All pondering, we slugged down the second round. “Perhaps something to go with the name of the camp would be the thing,” I suggested.

“I don’t like to give the idea this is a dead joint,” Gay asserted. “How’d a lively camp like this get a corpse’s name anyhow?”

“Well, I — ” It was on the tip of my tongue to mention that I had shot an Apache there. Just in time, however, I remembered that Potter had pre-empted that feat, and that I would only convict myself of claim jumping if I said otherwise.

“The story I got,” Short-fuse said, “is that old Seth Potter named it that, because while he was prospectin’ here he give some Injun a free ride to — say, what’s the matter with the Happy Huntin’ Ground?”

“It don’t tell what you’re hunting; it could just as well be gold or a drink,” Ham Gay discovered, when he had tried the name out. “That would go fine with the place, wouldn’t it?”

Some other customers arrived then, and he moved down the bar to make their acquaintance. “I ain’t yet got my sign up,” I heard him explaining a minute later, “but this joint is the Happy Hunting Ground.”

“That’s Dead Warrior all over,” one of the newcomers decided. “Drinks on deck here and gold out there, so’s to make it certain that the drinks can be bought when wanted. Hell, boys, we got high, low, jack and the best God-damn game in the United States of Paradise.”

The loyalty given to the midmorning institution did not mean that the camp was in the hands of shiftlessness. By ten o’clock most of the citizens of Dead Warrior had already put in four or five hours of backbreaking work. After first drink time they drifted back to their tasks, my companion along with the rest.

“Whereat do you bed down?” he asked, as he was about to leave.

“Well, last night I slept in my stage, Short-fuse. I’m starting a line between here and Tucson.”

“That’s all right,” he conceded, “but you ought to get you a claim. There ain’t no use in foolin’ around with hundreds of dollars when there’s thousands just waitin’ for a man to come along and say, ‘Jump in my pocket.’”

“Oh, I’ve got a claim.” I was glad to be able to say that I, too, belonged to the gold peerage. “But there’s no placer stuff on it; it’s all hard rock, and I’m no miner myself. I’ve got to make some money so I can afford to develop it, not to mention keep eating.”

“You don’t need any cash around here if you got a claim,” he snorted. “The stores know you’re good for anythin’ you charge.”

He was right in that. Dead Warrior’s two supply centers would hand over whatever they had, or would take orders for anything they didn’t have, at the request of any known prospector. It would be untrue to say that all of the latter were prepossessing in appearance; but every dirty shirttail sticking out through a hole in the seat of the owner’s pants belonged to a fellow who bore himself like what Macaulay would call a man of lordly race. There never was such a confident democracy since the Argonauts, also prospecting for gold, churned the Black Sea with their oars. Everybody was a distinctive personality whose attributes were common knowledge. Everybody stood on his own feet, and those feet were known to be planted on ledges seamed to fathomless depths with precious metal.

The small amount of claim jumping which now and again took place was due to inadvertence rather than to fraudulent intent. What was the sense of trying to steal filed claims when others just as good or better could be had for the asking? Mistakes were good-naturedly rectified, and nobody was too busy to help new fortune hunters out with advice or physical assistance.

To find a welcome a man had but to stroll to any of the campfires with which the area was starred, as soon as night brought chilliness to those arid uplands. Seth Potter’s camp remained the favorite gathering place, though. A special aura clung to him, as the explorer from whose discovery all were benefiting. A small portion of his glory was shared by me, as a matter of fact, owing to the old fellow’s chat about my mystic powers of divination. And at one assembly, at least, these were celebrated in song.

Among those who used to foregather at Seth’s camp to swap anecdotes that walked unabashed on both sides of truth there was one called Dink Flinders. Before coming West, for whatever reasons had made such a move desirable, Dink had cut some sort of figure in New York’s entertainment world. He had a facility for making jingles and would do so, when sufficiently primed, tailoring them to fit a popular tune of the day.

The song in question was one whose tune and refrain were borrowed from “What Do You Know about Kate Sullivan?” Flinders first introduced it after a hearty session at the Glory Hole, accompanying the words with pantomime.

Baltimore, he smelled the rocks

Like an old maid sniffing dirty socks,

And he says, “We’re loveseat-close to ore

With a thin stone rind and a big gold core.”