All he got was a shake of the head. Failure only stimulated Tecopa’s desire. His money refused, Cap in his desperation thought of the claim which the cunning of the promoters, the wiles of gamblers, the pleas of friends had failed to get.
The owner of the hat annoyed by Tecopa, decided to get rid of him. “You take hat. I take claim.”
The Indian reached for the topper. “Take um,” he grunted and the deal was made. Several other versions of this story are recalled by old timers.
The Tecopa Hot Springs were highly esteemed by the desert Indian, who always advertised the waters he believed to have medicinal value. In the Coso Range he used the walls of a canyon approaching the springs for his message. The crude drawing of a man was pictured, shoulders bent, leaning heavily on a stick. Another showed the same man leaving the springs but now walking erect, his stick abandoned.
The Tecopa Springs are about one and a half miles north of Tecopa and furnish an astounding example of rumor’s far-reaching power. Originally there was only one spring and when I first saw it, it was a round pool about eight feet in diameter, three feet deep and so hidden by tules that one might pass within a few feet of it unaware of its existence. The singularly clear water seeped from a barren hill. About, is a blinding white crust of boron and alkali. There Ann Cowboy used to lead Mary Shoofly, to stay the blindness that threatened Mary Shoofly’s failing eyes. When the whites discovered the spring, the Indians abandoned it.
Later it became a community bath tub and laundry. Prospectors would “hoof” it for miles to do their washing because the water was hot—112 degrees, and the borax content assured easy cleansing. Husbands and wives began to go for baths and someone hauled in a few pieces of corrugated iron and made blinds behind which they bathed in the nude. A garment was hung on the blind as a sign of occupation and it is a tribute to the chivalry of desert men that they always stopped a few hundred feet away to look for that garment, and advanced only when it was removed.
Today you will see two new structures at the spring and long lines of bathers living in trailers parked nearby. They are victims of arthritis, rheumatism, swollen feet, or something that had baffled physicians, patent medicines, and quacks. They come from every part of the country. Somebody has told them that somebody else had been cured at a little spring on the desert between Shoshone and Tecopa.
Some live under blankets, cook in a tin can over bits of wood hoarded like gold, for the vicinity is bare of growth. It is government land and space is free. Some camp on the bare ground without tent, the soft silt their only bed. “Something ails my blood. Shoulder gets to aching. Neck stiff. Come here and boil out” ... “Like magic—this water. I’ve been to every medicinal bath in Europe and America. This beats ’em all.”
You finally turn away, dazed with stories of elephantine legs, restored to perfect size and symmetry. Of muscles dead for a decade, moving with the precision of a motor. Of joints rigid as a steel rail suddenly pliable as the ankles of a tap dancer.
Here they sit in the sun—patient, hopeful; their crutches leaning against their trailer steps. They have the blessed privilege of discussing their ailments with each other. “Oh, your misery was nothing. Doctors said I would never reach here alive....”