[ [A]"Hot Springs"—now Glenwood Springs.—Editor.
[ [B]For authentic documents on the Meeker massacre see Chicago Tribune, Oct. 2-15, 1879; Denver papers of same date; Bancroft's History of Colorado; U.S. House Documents, 1879-1880 (Indian Commission).
[CHAPTER X.]
THE BLAZING-EYE MINE.
In Eastern California there lies a strip of country less than a hundred miles in length and thirty miles in width—the Gehenna of America—a basin so defiled that the abomination of the Israelites, the Valley of Hinnom, was a paradise; Tophet, where the sacrifices of children to Moloch were made by this Biblical tribe of Hebrews, was at least habitable. Death Valley lies two hundred and fifty feet lower than the tide water of the Pacific Ocean. Upon this strip of land grows no verdure, and within its confines exists no life save the scorpion, the centipede, the tarantula, the hideous gila monster and rattlesnakes, all more deadly poisonous than sisters and brothers of the same family found elsewhere, each species a continual menace to the others in the never ending battle for life—vindictive conquerors at last being vanquished by more malignant foes.
The desert is one mass of burning, blighting alkali sand. The heat is beyond human endurance, and what few pools of water may be found by digging deep into the earth are so pregnant with disease-breeding, loathsome germs, that death is but hastened to the poor victim of thirst who attempts to assuage his sufferings by drinking the polluted reward of frenzied labor.
At one time the government established an observation station within the borders of this waste to give scientifically to the world an accurate account of the perils which await the prospector venturesome enough to visit this living ossuary—the realm of the dead and habitat of the uncanny. Records show that the government representative found the heat so burdensome that clothing was dispensed with, and in nature's primitive garb the lonely vigils were passed until the station was abandoned.
Years before, a prospector braved the perils of the desert and returned more dead than alive, but with golden sand and golden nuggets and tales of a mine whose splendor out-dazzled the wildest dreams. This prospector called the mine after himself, "Pegleg." He obtaining his sobriquet from the fact that one of his legs was a wooden peg. He organized a party and they entered the valley, never to return. Other parties were formed and attempted a rescue, only to leave their bones to bleach as monuments of man's distorted and perverse cupidity.
The government sent a detachment of soldiers, well versed in the knowledge of all the impending dangers, but none returned save a corporal, and he a raving maniac, upon a thirst-crazed mule. Thus the famous "Pegleg" mine became a legend fraught with mystery and weird, blood-curdling memories.
It was to this mine, "The Blazing-Eye-by-the-Big-Water," that Yamanatz was to conduct Jack. The Utes in years gone by made the trip from the mountains to the desert land and returned laden with golden ornaments, their trappings covered with gold nuggets beaten into fantastic shapes. It took many moons in their comings and goings, and many fierce battles were waged with other tribes in the latter's endeavors to wrest the secret from the wily warriors, who knew of a safe but dangerous underground river bed, which wound its tortuous way beneath the sand-covered desert, cutting the wonderful deposit in half. But even this passage to that mountain of wealth was beset by terrors as frightful as those above the ground. Reptiles had ingress and egress from fissures leading to the surface, and one was in constant danger at every step, not from the trail alone, but from the roof and sides of that slimy cañon, the gloom of which added to the dark hideousness, as the feeble, flickering torches awakened the lethargic inhabitants of that abandoned inferno.