But Jean Cazaurang had saved two bits.
A big luxuriously appointed hearse came for Jean and people said it was the first decent ride he’d ever had in his life.
Sentiment was with the Mexican, but he drew a short term for bungling.
Because in one will Jean left his property to his wife and in another to his housekeeper, the estate was tied up in court, where it remained for 11 years—fat pickings for lawyers. Finally the widow was awarded one half the estate under community property law, but the widow was dead. The housekeeper got the other half, and so ends the story of Jean Cazaurang and two bits.
Rarely did desert ranches show other profits than those which one finds in doing the thing one likes to do, as in the case of a recent owner of the Manse—the wealthy Mrs. Lois Kellogg—the soft-voiced eastern lady who fell in love with the desert, drilled an artesian well, the flow of which is among the world’s largest. Small, cultured, she yet found thrills in driving a 20-ton truck and trailer from the Manse to Los Angeles or to the famed Oasis Ranch 200 miles away in Fish Lake Valley—another desert landmark which she bought to further gratify her passion for the Big Wide Open.
And there you have a slice of life as it is on the desert—one miserably dying in his lust for money, one fleeing its solitude; another seeking its solace.
Chapter XV
The Story of Charles Brown
The story of Charles Brown and the Shoshone store begins at Greenwater. In the transient horde that poured into that town, he was the only one who hadn’t come for quick, easy money. On his own since he was 11 years old, when he’d gone to work in a Georgia mine, he wanted only a job and got it. In the excited, loose-talking mob he was conspicuous because he was silent, calm, unhurried.
There were no law enforcement officers in Greenwater. The jail was 130 miles away and every day was field day for the toughs. Better citizens decided finally to do something about it. They petitioned George Naylor, Inyo county’s sheriff at Independence to appoint or send a deputy to keep some semblance of order.
Naylor sent a badge over and with it a note: “Pin it on some husky youngster, unmarried and unafraid and tell him to shoot first.”