On the second evening a bell sounded in the dusk. When you travel with burros on the desert it is the custom to put a bell on one of them at night so you can find them in the morning, and often the bell is left on during the day's journey. That sound meant that someone was coming to our camp-fire. Soon a frail old man with two loaded burros and a little dog appeared. It was "Old Johnnie," an habitué of Death Valley, coming home. He had an unworked gold-mine near Keane Wonder and he spent his life looking after his property. Apparently he was also the official caretaker of Keane Wonder itself. He performed his duties by looking over our camp and guarding every bit of wire and every old rusty nail as though they were gold itself. He hovered around us, especially at departure, so we only succeeded in stealing one iron bar for our fireplace, and we needed two. We cast longing eyes at a certain chipped, granite kettle, but finally had to borrow that, promising solemnly to return it at Beatty on our way back. Perhaps he was unduly suspicious because the Worrier had taken a bit of some very ancient and hopeless-looking hay, which we found in the barn, to cheer up Molly and Bill.
"How could I know he lived here?" he apologized to us. "Anyways, there wasn't but two mouthfuls."
But "Old Johnnie" was hospitable, as all old-timers are. He urged Charlotte and me to move into the superintendent's house. It had been a good house once, but in its present condition we preferred the open sand, nor could we bear even for a night to have a roof between us and the blue deeps of that star-filled sky. He was a garrulous talker and very friendly. He claimed that his mine was richer than Keane Wonder ever dreamed of being. Once some one had offered him $300,000, but his partner would not look at it. His tone implied that it was a paltry sum anyway. He was an inventor, too, and had sold a patent for an automobile-part which he described in great detail. We asked him if he still hoped to sell the mine. He seemed not to know what he intended to do. Plainly he was another victim of the "terrible fascination." He related how he had lately been to Tonopah and got sick and almost died from lack of air in the clutter of things. The Worrier said that he had money put away somewhere, but money or no money, whether he ever sold the mine or not, he would hang around Death Valley the rest of his life.
"Old Johnnie" rose to fine heights as a story-teller when we invited him to dinner next day. We had brought some fresh meat which had to be used up early on the trip, and the Worrier achieved a magnificent meal. Usually I was the cook, but that dinner was far beyond me. He invaded the ruined boarding-house, wrestled successfully with the rusty stove, and produced a roast surrounded by potatoes and onions to be long remembered. We ate it at the board table in the dining-room. "Old Johnnie" changed his coat for the festivity; he beamed upon us and talked. He had the good story-teller's gift of suggestion and in the midst of that blazing emptiness steeped in a silence broken only by the wind clanging rusted cables and rattling the loosened iron roof, he peopled the dining-room again. We saw the faces of the men crowding in for their supper and heard their voices. Once more the camp-cook in white apron and cap, for "Old Johnnie" described it as a fine camp "run right," leaned over the table to pour soup into granite bowls. Keane Wonder came to life while the obliterating desolation crept in at the door.
He told stories of other mining camps and of the struggle of individual prospectors with the valley. You outwit its wickedness or you are outwitted by it. It was alive, a sort of fascinating enemy. His words took us with him and his burros down its white length. The enemy had uncanny powers. She played strange tricks on you. If she could not get you one way she tried another.
"You find fellers dead down there," he said. "And they don't die of thirst, either. Sometimes there's water in the canteens. They just go crazy. She gets 'em."
He leaned closer across the table and his voice became lower.
"And you hear 'em in the night," he whispered.
"Hear who?"