More Prospectin' Notes..

[mnaz]

Note: Some random extra notes to go with an earlier story ("Gold")...... scattershot, rambling, amusing in places....



The story of old Red was impossible to resist; how a humble Depression-era gold miner became known as a philosopher of the realm, a 'Renaissance man'. Red is no longer alive, so I went down recently to meet the man who took over Red's claim in the western Mojave. His name is Bill. I camped out in a miner's cabin that Saturday, then drove up the trail to Red's camp. Bill showed up an hour later in a beat-up Datsun 4x4 pickup with good tires. That's all one really needs on the trail, some ground clearance and good rubber with bite.

We sat on Red's porch, cracked a mid-morning beer, and delved into some lore. And then Bill went to work. He is trying to put the scattershot camp into a semblance of order and sort through rust and artifacts in search of history. I puzzled for awhile over Red's sea of inventions, particularly his hole digger, a peculiar contraption built atop a 1943 Ford chassis, with a rear-mounted gas engine which powered a maze of gears, pulleys and steel cable which ran up over a 17-foot vertical frame and hooked to a heavy, bladed steel cylinder.

The oldtimers are all gone now and the mountains serve up lore. Maxine, who held out for decades on the mountainside due south after her husband died, feuded for many years with another woman who tried to run her off the disputed claim. This other woman took pot shots at Maxine's place, and set fire to various equipment, eventually turning up at Maxine's door with a gun. But Maxine knocked the gun out of her challenger's hands and offered counsel that a gun is useless unless one is prepared to use it. The feud tapered off after that.

Maxine liked to stay prepared. She kept a whole mess of bacon in her icebox, though she rarely consumed it. She never much cared for it. Well, one day a pound of bacon turned up missing, so she fired up the jeep and bounced down the trail to Red's cabin. She pounded on his door and confronted him with a loaded 45 as he stood there in his shorts, obliged to think fast. Those long stretches of solitude perhaps amplify paranoia as well as peace....

Or delusion. As in Silas, who took a shine to a certain stretch of canyon and moved into an abandoned cabin. He had no claim, yet fired warning shots at those who tried to pass through on the trail. "Get off my claim!", he crackled.

Mining in the area began around 1900. Gold was found in Red's canyon by those who arrived too late to stake out earlier booms in the area, as common in mining's history. The 'Big Three' camp was the first strike. The original Big Three partners were robbed and killed as they transported part of their treasure across the desert into town. That unknown sum of gold became a runaway legend. In later years, Red told of the strays who came from the city to ask the miners about that 'missing 189-million dollars in gold', and where it might have gone. But Red put a more likely figure on the legend, somewhere near two-thousand dollars. He should know. He worked the Big Three early on, before he struck out on his own.

He made a steady go of it. He was derided for his approach at times, but he outlasted everyone else. He looked for a 'waterfall'; an ancient stream bed inside the mesa, tucked in sedimentary strata. He claimed the only way to work the country was to tunnel in and follow the river channel. Always dig for the bottom of the stream, where gold is scattered. He would make a ten-foot tunnel and find sixty dollars worth of gold-- throw away the tunnel itself because it never paid.

Bill believes in Red's claim, even after decades of mining. He fetched a plastic pill bottle from his pocket and took out two tiny globs of gold which he found at the end of the mesa. One of them might be big enough for a jewelry store to make into a trinket directly-- worth maybe fifty bucks. Never count on more than a quarter or third of market value in such an exchange. But never discount the next hidden bonanza either, as Bill reminded me. But I think I'll settle for sunset over the southwest hills, at least for now.