Loafing Along Death Valley Trails

Seeing that water dripped from Dad’s blankets, Dr. Slocum went for dry bedding. When he returned, Dad had his own bedding spread on the ground. “Here, Dad – take this dry bedding…”

“Not on your life,” Dad said as he crawled into his own. “I’d catch cold, sure as hell.”

Two noted athletes of the period went into the Panamint for a vacation. When they asked for a guide, they were told to get Dad, but after looking him over they decided he lacked stamina, but engaged him when they could find no one else. The route was over the Panamint into Death Valley and back through Redlands Canyon – a trip to test the hardiest.

On the third day Dad returned alone. Asked about his companions, he grumbled: “They’re down and out. Now I’ve got to haul ’em in.”

He took his burros, lashed the victims securely on the beasts and brought them in.

Remembered by oldsters, was Archie McDermot, a big fellow of unbelievable strength who was an all-purpose employee of Dr. Slocum.

While they were camped at Barstow one night, Archie went up town to pass a cheerful hour and during the course of the evening a brawl started and Archie suddenly found himself the object of a mass attack by five burly miners. Archie knocked them down as they came, threw them out and returned to his drinking. The constable went in to take Archie. Archie tossed him through the door. The officer didn’t want to kill him, and collecting a posse of four brawny helpers, tried again. Archie pitched them out.

Being a friend of Slocum, the constable now went to see the Doctor. “Doc, can’t you come down and do something about Archie? Knowing how you need him, I don’t want to kill him…”

Doctor Slocum went, discovered that Archie, after throwing everybody out of the place, had seized the long heavy bar, turned it on its side and was sitting on the edge with a bottle in each hand. Doctor Slocum regarded the wreckage and then Archie. “Good Lord, Archie, what have you done?”

“Nothing, Doc,” Archie said. “Just having a nip. Take one on the house…”

“What about this fight?”

“Fight?” repeated Archie. “Oh, that – some fellows tried to start a little ruckus but I didn’t pay much attention to it.”

But if Archie had no fear of a dozen live men, he was terrorized by a dead one.

Doctor and Mrs. Slocum, with Archie, were leaving their camp in the Panamint. The thermometer under the canopy of the vehicle registered 135 degrees – hot for an April day, even in Death Valley country. As they drove along, the Doctor noticed some clothing on a bush. “Seems strange,” he said. “Let’s look around.”

Archie skirmished through the bushes. Presently he returned, his face white, horror in his eyes. He grabbed the wagon wheel, his quivering bulk shaking the heavily loaded vehicle. “For God’s sake, Doc. Go and look!”

The Doctor saw a sight as pitiable as it is ever man’s lot to see – a young fellow dying from thirst on the desert. His protruding tongue split in the middle. Unable to speak, though retaining a spark of life. The fingers of both hands worn to stubs.

Kneeling, Doctor Slocum asked the victim where he came from; where he wished to go. No sign came from the staring eyes. Finally the Doctor said, “We want to help you. We have water. We’re going to take you home.” At the mention of home, a feeble smile came, and two tears, the last two drops in that wasted body, rolled down his cheeks and dried in the desert sun and then he died. There was nothing to do but bury the body.

“You’ll have to help me, Archie,” the Doctor said.

A look of terror came into Archie’s eyes. “Doc,” he pleaded, “ask me anything but that…”

The man who’d cleaned up Barstow, quailed in superstitious fear at the thought of touching the dead.

They looked around for a place to dig a grave. But the country was covered with malpai and lava rock and they couldn’t dig in it. The Doctor wrapped the body in a piece of canvas and Mrs. Slocum aided in lifting it into the wagon. She drove the team while the Doctor and Archie walked along, looking for loose earth and finally found a spot. Archie dug the grave. The Doctor lowered the body and Archie with shut eyes, filled the grave.

A press story of the finding brought a flood of letters from all parts of the country. Such stories always do. From mothers, wives, sweethearts – but none from men. It’s always the woman who cares.

Such deaths are due to inexperience. This boy had no canteen. Just around the corner of a jutting hill was Lone Willow Spring.

Though scarcely a vestige remains, there was once a town at Lone Willow. Saloons and an enormous dance hall lured the Bad Boys and there the trail ended for scores reported as missing men.

Cyclone Wilson, a nephew of Shady Myrick who built a sizable export trade in gem stones, and for whom Myrick Springs is named, was taking a wagon load of Chinese coolies to work at Old Harmony. All Chinamen looked alike to Cyclone and he didn’t know that these were newcomers. It was his custom to discharge his passengers at the foot of a steep hill near Lone Willow and require them to walk to the top.

As usual, upon reaching this grade he set his brakes and waited for the coolies to get out. None moved, then he ordered them out. The Chinamen sat in stony silence. He repeated the order with no result other than jabber among themselves. Angered, Cyclone reached for his long blacksnake whip. It had a “cracker” on the end of which was a buckshot. With unerring accuracy he aimed the whip at the nearest coolie and overboard he went. The others leaped out and drawing knives from their big loose sleeves, massed for assault.

Cyclone reached for a pistol – always carried on the wagon seat, and started shooting. His toll was five Chinamen.

The cause of the murders, it was later learned, was due entirely to the fact that none of the Chinamen had understood a word Cyclone had spoken.

A Chinaman at Lone Willow, who spoke English made his countrymen bury the dead.

Today Ballarat is a ghost town and soon every trace of it will be gone. Roofless walls lift like prayerful arms to gods that are deaf.

In the late afternoon when the shadows of the Argus Range have crept across the valley, a few old timers come out of leaning dobes and stand bareheaded to look about. The afterglow of a sun is upon the peaks and the afterglow of dreams in their hearts. They people the empty streets with men long dead, some in unmarked graves in the little cemetery on the flat just beyond the town. Some on the trails, God only knows where. These dead they see pass in and out of the old saloons. These dead they hear again. Glasses tinkle, slippered feet dance again.

Tomorrow? Their pale eyes lift to the canyons and though dimmed a little, they see one hundred billion dollars.

What of Shoshone? It remains with changes of course. The shanties hauled from Greenwater have been hauled somewhere else. No longer do I step from my car as I have so often and call to those on the bench. “Move over, fellows” and hear their familiar greeting: “Where the hell you been?”

Instead, I drive to an air conditioned cabin and stroll back to the former site of the bench, so long the social center. There I see a sign over a door which reads, “Crowbar” and I enter a dreamy cavern with dimmed, rosy lights, hear the music of ice against glass and refuse to believe the startling sight of an honest-to-goodness old timer tending bar in a clean white shirt.

Likewise I balk at the white lines I walk between as I cross the asphalt road to the store.

But above Shoshone the same blue skies stretch without end over a world apart, and under them are the same uncrowded trails; the same far horizons for the vagabond’s foot and the peace “which passeth all understanding.”