With the half breeds, the school was able to open.
Rosie was a challenging problem. She would have taken no beauty prize among the Piutes, but when along her desert trails she acquired these children of assorted parentage, Fate dealt her an ace.
With the few dollars Rosie wangled from the several fathers for the support of their children, she lived unworried. She liked to get drunk and the only nettling problem in her life was the federal law against selling liquor to Indians. So she established her own medium of exchange—a bottle of liquor. Unfortunately she spread a social disease and that was something to worry about.
“Rosie has Shoshone over a barrel,” Joe Ryan said. “If we run her out, we won’t have enough children for school.”
Then there was the economic angle—the loss of wages by afflicted miners and mines crippled by the absence of the unafflicted who would take time off to go to Las Vegas for the commodity supplied by Rosie.
Charlie arranged for Ann Cowboy to look after Rosie’s children and called up W. H. Brown, deputy sheriff at Death Valley Junction and told him to come for Rosie. Brownie, as he is known all over the desert, came and took Rosie into custody. “What’ll I charge her with?”
“She has a venereal disease,” Charlie said.
“There’s no law I know of against that....”
“All right. Charge her with pollution. She got drunk and fell into the spring.” Then Charlie called up the Judge and suggested Rosie have a year’s vacation in the county jail.
The paths that radiated from Rosie’s shack in the brush like spokes from the hub of a wheel, were soon overgrown with salt grass. She served her sentence and returned to Shoshone and the paths were soon beaten smooth again.