This is where I went down—second time. Took this picture while waiting for the stage. Frank’s mail box is about a mile around the bend of the road. The trail—foot path—going over the mountain starts near the right edge of this view’ and tops the mountain starts near the right edge of this view, and tops the mountain at the head of a canyon, on the other side.
We reached the stage road about two hours before the stage was due. Frank walked on three miles farther to the mine, and I hobbled along until within a mile of “our” mountain—then my ankle toppled me over again, and I lay there with my head shaded by a single sagebrush. As the sun moved along on its westward course—which of course it didn’t do at all—I had to scratch gravel frequently, sliding on my back, to keep my head shielded from the burning desert sun.
The stage-driver let us off at Frank’s mail box, and Myrtle had a hard time helping me over the hump and down the canyon to the mine. We took the short cut over the mountain instead of going a mile or more around on the wagon road; through a saddle-back, and then up the canyon to the mine, which would have been less arduous. We were carrying provisions for six meals for the three of us. There was water at the mine. It had rained a month before, and Frank had scooped up the water out of a ditch. No fiction in this. Water really “keeps” out there—when in an underground house, anyway.
We had overlooked the need for candles and coffee—or rather they were missing from the pack. Acting on Frank’s suggestion, Myrtle went out on the mountain side, gathered leaves from the lowly sage brush—and we had our tea. But the absence of candles was a more serious matter. Frank hunted the underground house, and the tunnels, finally finding a two-inch piece of candle at the far end of a 500-foot tunnel.
The wife and I slept—no, bunked—the first night in the underground house. To get into the place we had to hug a wall as we approached the door to avoid dropping into a 60-foot shaft by the side of the entrance, where Frank had taken out $65 worth of RICH silver ore—at a cost of $500 for digging the hole.
There were mice, and probably lizards too, running over our bed on the floor. Little lizards were very active on the outside, in the daytime. And Frank and I had killed a rattlesnake while strolling about over the grounds the year before. The crack under the door was big enough to let in almost anything short of a panther.
Also, a big body of ore protruding from the ceiling directly over our bed looked as if it might slip from its moorings with the slightest jar, and there was some jarring force at work all through the night. Grains of crushed limestone, like sand, sifted down upon us almost continously. Myrtle spent the night lighting, blowing out, and relighting that little piece of candle. In this way she made it last until morning.
The next night—Sunday night—we slept, or rather bunked, on an ore-sorting table out on the tunnel dump, under the stars. Frank had taken his bedroll a hundred yards down the canyon to find level “ground” on which to make his spread. I had sent an old trunk filled with bedding including a couple of pillows the year before. The wife thought Frank had been a little lax in the matter of laundering same.
