One night he went to Tecopa. Friends were doing a spot of drinking and far behind in his score with the years, Casey joined them. There was nothing out of line. Just yarns and memories and Casey had a lot of these. Tonopah. Goldfield. Rawhide. Ely. Foundling days.
“... They put me in a religious school. Had no relatives. In those days they whaled hell outa you just to see you squirm. ‘Casey,’ the teacher would ask, ‘who swallowed the whale?’ How did I know? Then he’d drag me off by the ear and blister my bottom. I shoved off one night. Been on the loose ever since.”
As he drank from his bottle of beer he suddenly slumped—and died instantly. Because of the intense heat, Maury Sorrells, now Supervisor but then Coroner, ordered immediate burial.
Someone recalled Casey’s wish to be put in the dugout and the hill blown up and started for the dynamite. But Whitey Bill McGarn warned that it would violate the law. One-eyed Casey—no relation, but long a friend, suggested a wake until the grave was dug. “It will be daylight then and we’ll plant him in the wash right in front of his dugout.”
This was done as the sun came over the hills and I like to think that somewhere in the after life, all is well with Casey.
Ben Brandt, previously mentioned, was a big blond man with child-like blue eyes, huge gnarled hands and the strength of an ox. He wore enormous boots, but when he bought new ones he always complained that they lacked traction and would go immediately to the dump, salvage an old tire casing and add two inches of reinforcement to the soles, with half a pound of hobnails. Ben then was ready for travel—provided he could find his burros.
Near remote Quail Springs Ben dug a 4×4 mine shaft 75 feet deep, without aid. Descending by ladder he would fill a 10 gallon bucket with dirt, climb out and bring it to the surface. Day after day, month after month Ben applied the power of two strong arms and two strong legs. “With an engine you could do it in half the time,” Ben was told. “I’ve got plenty of time,” Ben drawled.
Ben disdained gold in quartz formation. “I like placer. It’s a poor man’s game. If you find gold you put it in your poke and you’ve got spending money.”
Ben kept five burros and being industrious, never lacked a grubstake. He avoided argument except upon one subject, and that was burros versus Fords in prospecting. “I can get anywhere with my burros. I find stalled flivvers all over the desert and my burros drag ’em in.”
Ben believed that a burro had at least some of the intellectual powers of man. “Read a clock good as you,” he said. “I worked my burro, Solomon, on a hoist. He didn’t like it. I got up every morning at daylight, by an alarm clock. Slept out and kept the clock on a boulder at my head and got up when the alarm went off. One morning I woke up with the sun shining straight down in my eyes. It was noon. That burro had sneaked up and taken that clock down the canyon a mile away. Don’t tell me they can’t think! I sold him. Too smart.”