Loafing Along Death Valley Trails

Chapter XXIV

Indian George. Legend of the Panamint

The previous chapter records accepted history of the silver discovery at Panamint City. Indian George Hansen had another version which he told me at his ranch 11 miles north of Ballarat. It fits the period and the people then in the country.

George, when a youngster lived in the Coso Range. East of the Coso there was no white man for 100 miles and renegades fleeing from their crimes and deserters from the Union army sought hideouts in the Panamint. Thus George was employed as a guide by three outlaws to lead them to safe refuge.

George, a Shoshone, had both friends and relatives among the Shoshones and the Piutes and took the bandits into Surprise Canyon where a camp for the night was chosen. While staking out his pack animals, George discovered a ledge of silver ore. Breaking off a chunk, he stuck it into his pocket, saying nothing about it until they were out of the locality. Then he showed the specimen and to promote a deal, gave one of them a sample. They wanted to see the ledge but George refused to disclose it. Then George said the three fellows stepped aside and after talking in whispers told him they didn’t like the country and returning with him to the Coso Range, went on their way. Two or three months later they were back to bargain.

George had traded with the white man before. They had always given him a few dollars and a rosy promise. “Now me pretty foxy. So I say, ‘no want money. Maybe lose.’ Him say, ‘what hell you want?’

“‘Heap good job all time I live.’

“‘Okay,’ him say. ‘We give you job.’

“I show claim.” George paused, a look of smoldering hate in his dark eyes, then added: “I get job. Two weeks. Him say, ‘you fired.’ I get $50.”

All Indians and many of the old timers believe that the ledge George found was that for which Jones and Stewart paid $2,000,000.

George made another deal worthy of mention. The town of Trona on Searles’ Lake needed the water owned by George’s relative, Mabel, who herded 500 goats and sold them to butchers at Skidoo, Goldfield, and Rhyolite where they became veal steak or lamb chops. Trona offered $30 a month for the use of the water. Mabel consulted George as head man of the Shoshones and advised Trona that the sum would not be considered. It must pay $27.50 or do without. A superstition regarding numbers accounted for the price George fixed for the water.

My acquaintance with Indian George began on my first trip to Ballarat with Shorty Harris and was the result of a stomach ache Shorty had. I suggested a trip to a doctor at Trona instead.

“No, sir. I’ll see old Indian George. If these doctors knew as much as these old Indians, there wouldn’t be any cemeteries.”

I asked what evidence he had of George’s skill.

“Plenty. You know Sparkplug (Michael Sherlock)? He was in a bad way. Fred Gray put a mattress in his pickup, laid Sparkplug on it and hauled him over to Trona. Nurses took him inside. Doctor looked him over and came out and asked Fred if he knew where old Sparkplug wanted to be buried. ‘Why, Ballarat, I reckon,’ Fred said.

“Well, you take him back quick. He’ll be dead when you get there. Better hurry. He’ll spoil on you this hot weather.’

“Fred raced back, taking curves on Seventeen with two wheels hanging over the gorge, but he made it; stopped in front of Sparkplug’s shack, jumped out and called to me to bring a pick and shovel. Then he ran over to Bob Warnack’s shack for help to make a coffin. Indian George happened to ride by the pickup and saw Sparkplug’s feet sticking out. He crawled off his cayuse, took a look, lifted Sparkplug’s eyelids and leaving his horse ground-hitched, he went out in the brush and yanked up some roots here and there. Then he went up to Hungry Hattie’s and came back with a handful of chicken guts and rabbit pellets; brewed ’em in a tomato can and when he got through he funneled it down Sparkplug’s throat and in no time at all Sparkplug was up and packing his flivver to go prospecting. If you don’t believe me, there’s Sparkplug right over there tinkering with his car.”

George’s age has been a favorite topic of writers of Death Valley history for the last 30 years.

I stopped for water once at the little stream flumed out of Hall’s Canyon to supply the ranch. He was irrigating his alfalfa in a temperature of 122 degrees. I had brought him three or four dozen oranges and suggested that Mabel would like some of the fruit.

“Heavy work for a man of your age,” I said.

He bit into an orange, eating both peeling and pulp. “Me papoose. Me only 107 years old.”

There were less than a dozen oranges left when I began to cast about for a tactful way to preserve a few for Mabel. Seeing her chopping wood in the scorching sun I said, “I’ll bet Mabel would like an orange just now. Shall I call her?”

“No – no – ” George grunted. “Oranges heap bad for squaw,” and speeding up his eating, he removed the last menace to Mabel.

Once George told me of watching the sufferings of the Jayhawkers and Bennett-Arcane party:

“Me little boy, first time I see white man. Whiskers make me think him devil. I run. I see some of Bennett party die. When all dead, we go down. First time Indians ever see flour. Squaws think it what make white men white and put it on their faces.”

I asked George why he didn’t go down and aid the whites. “Why?” he asked, “to get shot?”

“How many Shoshones are left?” I asked George.

He counted them on his fingers. “Nineteen. Soon, none.”

George died in 1944 and it is safe I believe, to say that for 110 years he had baffled every agency of death on America’s worst desert. Because his ranch was a landmark and the water that came from the mountains was good, it was a natural stopping place and he was known to thousands. Following a curious custom of Indians George adopted the Swedish name Hansen because it had euphony he liked.

The Panamint is the locale of the legend of Swamper Ike, first told I believe by Old Ranger over a nation-wide hookup, while he was M.C. of the program “Death Valley Days.”

A daring, but foolhardy youngster, with wife and baby, undertook to cross the range. Unacquainted with the country and scornful of its perils, he reached the crest, but there ran out of water. He left his wife and the baby on the trail, comfortably protected in the shade of a bluff and started down the Death Valley side of the range to find water.

After a thorough search of the canyons about, he climbed to a higher level, scanned the floor of the valley. Seeing a lake that reflected the peaks of the Funeral Range he made for it under a withering sun. He learned too late that it was a mirage and exhausted, started back only to be beaten down and die.

After waiting through a night of terror, the young mother prepared a comfortable place for her baby and went in search of her husband. She too saw the blue lake and made for it, saw it vanish as he had. Then she discovered his tracks and undertook to follow him, but she also was beaten down and fell dead within a few feet of his lifeless body.

A band of wandering Cocopah Indians crossing the range, found the baby. They took the child to their own habitation on the Colorado river and named him Joe Salsuepuedes, which is Indian for “Get-out-if-you-can.”

Joe grew up as Indian, burned dark by the desert sun. But he had an idea he wasn’t Indian. Learning that he was a foundling, picked up in the Panamint, he set out for Death Valley, possessed of a singular faith that somehow he would discover evidence that he was a white man.

He obtained a job as swamper for the Borax Company. When he gave his name the boss said, “Too many Joe’s working here. We’ll call you Ike.”

Early Indians, as you may see in Dead Man’s Canyon, the Valley of Fire, and numerous canyons in the western desert had a habit of scratching stories of adventure or signs to inform other Indians of unusual features of a locality on the canyon walls – often coloring the tracing with dyes from herbs or roots. Knowing this, Swamper Ike was always alert for these hieroglyphs on any boulder he passed or in any canyon he entered.

One day Swamper Ike went out to look for a piece of onyx that he could polish and give to the girl he loved. While seeking the onyx he noticed a flat slab of travertine and on it the picture story of “Get-out-if-you-can.”

Swamper Ike had justified his faith.

Chapter XXV

Ballarat. Ghost Town

In the early 1890’s gold discovered on the west side of the Panamint in Pleasant Canyon caused the rush responsible for Ballarat. For more than 20 years the district had been combed by prospectors holed in at Post Office Spring, about one half mile south of the site upon which Ballarat was subsequently built. Here the government had a small army post and here soldiers, outlaws, and adventurers received their mail from a box wired in the crotch of a mesquite tree.

The Radcliffe, which was the discovery mine was a profitable producer. The timbers and machinery were hauled from Randsburg over the Slate Range and across Panamint Valley, to the mouth of the canyon. There, under the direction of Oscar Rogers, it was packed on burros and taken up the steep grade to the mine site.

Copperstain Joe, a noted half-breed Indian made the next strike. With a specimen, he went to Mojave where he showed it to Jim Cooper. For five dollars and a gallon of whiskey he led Cooper to the site.

But his deal with Cooper interested me less than the cunning of his burro, Slick. Copperstain strode into a hardware store and asked for a lock. “It’s for Slick’s chain. Picks a lock soon as I turn my back – dam’ him.”

The merchant showed him a lock of intricate mechanism, “He won’t pick this. Costs more, but worth it.”

“I don’t care what it costs,” Copperstain said and bought it. Later he looped the chain around the burro’s feet, fastened the links with the lock and tethered Slick to a stake. “That’ll hold you – ” he said defiantly.

The next morning he was back in the store, belligerent. “Helluva lock you sold me. Slick picked it in no time.”

“Impossible.”

“The burro’s gone, ain’t he?” Copperstain bristled, and reaching into his pocket, produced the lock. “See that nail in the keyhole? I didn’t put it there. Slick just found a nail – that’s all.”

The future of Pleasant Canyon seemed assured and it was decided to move the two saloons and grocery to the flats below, where a town would have room to grow.

When citizens met to choose a name, George Riggins, a young Australian suggested the new town be given a name identified with gold the world over. Ballarat in his native country met the requirement and its name was adopted.

Shorty Harris discovered The Star, The Elephant, the World Beater, The St. Patrick. In Tuba, Jail, Surprise, and Goler Canyons more strikes were made. It is curious that none were made in Happy Canyon.

The production figures of early mines are rarely dependable and the yield is often confused with that obtained by swindlers from outright sale or stock promotion. My friend, Oscar Rogers, superintendent, told me the Radcliffe produced a net profit of approximately $500,000. Less authentic are figures attributed to the following:

The O. B. Joyful in Tuba Canyon, $250,000; The Gem in Jail Canyon, $150,000; and Shorty Harris’ World Beater, $200,000.

Among the noted of Ballarat residents was John LeMoyne, a Frenchman. He discovered a silver mine in Death Valley but the best service he gave the desert was a recipe for coffee. He walked into Ballarat one day and had lunch. The lady who owned the cafe asked if everything suited. “All but the coffee,” John said.

“How do you make your coffee?” she asked.

“Madame, there’s no trick about making good coffee. Plenty coffee. Dam’ little water.”

From one end of Death Valley country to the other, coffee is judged by John LeMoyne’s standard. You may not always get it, but mention it and the waiter will know.

For years LeMoyne held his silver claim in spite of offers far beyond its value, which he believed was $5,000,000. But once when the urge to return to his beloved France was strong and Goldfield, Tonopah, and Rhyolite excited the nation, he weakened and decided to accept an offer said to have been $200,000. “But,” he told the buyers, “it must be cash.”

After a huddle, John’s demand was met and a check offered. John brushed it aside. “But this eez not cash,” he complained. No, he wouldn’t go to town to get the cash. He had work to do. “You get eet.”

Disgusted, the buyers left and John LeMoyne continued to wear his rags, eat his beans, and dream of La Belle France.

A young Shoshone Indian came into Keeler excited as an Indian ever gets, looked up Shorty Harris and said: “Short Man, your friend go out. No come back. Maybe him sick.” It was midsummer, but LeMoyne had undertaken to reach his claim.

In the bottom of the valley, Shorty identified LeMoyne’s tracks by a peculiar hobnail which LeMoyne used in his shoes. He followed the tracks to Cottonwood Spring and there found an old French pistol which he knew had belonged to LeMoyne. Convinced he was on the right trail, he went on and after a mile or two met Death Valley Scotty.

“I know why you’re here,” Scotty said. “I’ve just found his body.”

LeMoyne was partially eaten by coyotes and nearby were his dead burros. Though tethered to the mesquite with slender cotton cords which they could easily have broken, the patient asses had elected to die beside him.

And there ended the dream of the glory trail back to the France he loved. Those who believe in the jinx will find something to sustain their faith in the record of John LeMoyne’s mine.

After LeMoyne’s death, Wild Bill Corcoran who had made and lost fortunes in the lush days of Rhyolite, set out from Owens Valley to relocate it. Never a ranting prohibitionist, Bill believed that the best remedy for snake bite was likker in the blood when the snake bit. When he reached Darwin he was not feeling well and stopped long enough for a nip with friends and to get a youngster to drive his car and help at the camp.

It was midsummer, with record temperature but Bill wanted John LeMoyne’s mine. Becoming worse in the valley he stopped in Emigrant Canyon and sent the boy back for a doctor. Bill crawled into an old shack under the hill. When the boy and the doctor came, they found Bill Corcoran on the floor, his hand stretched toward a bottle of bootleg liquor. His soul had gone over the hill.

One after another, five others followed Bill to file on LeMoyne’s claim and each in turn joined Bill over the hill.

LeMoyne’s Christian name was Jean. His surname has been spelled both Lemoigne and Lemoine. The claim from which Indians had formerly taken lead was filed upon by LeMoyne in 1882.

Joe Gorsline, a graduate of Columbia, with a background of wealth, came to Ballarat during the rush, looked over the town. “Wouldn’t spend another day in this dump for all the gold in the mint,” he announced. He had a few drinks, heard a few yarns, eyed a few girls in the honkies. It was all new to Joe, but something about the informalities of life appealed to him and in a little while he was renamed Joe Goose.

Then the town’s constable shot its Judge and Ballarat chose him to succeed the deceased. Not liking the laws of the code, he made a batch of his own, which were never questioned. While watching the flow of time and liquor, he “went desert” and put aside the things that might have been for the more alluring things-as-they-are.

When Ballarat became a ghost town, Joe Gorsline took his body to the city, but his soul remained and years afterward when he died, a hearse came down the mountain and in it was Joe Gorsline, home again. He is buried in a little cemetery out on the flat and in the spring the golden sun cups, grow all around and you walk on them to get to his grave.

Adding a cultural touch to Ballarat was an English nobleman who “going desert” tossed his title out of the window, donned overalls and brogans and promptly earned the approving verdict, “An all right guy.” Soon he was drinking with the toper and dancing with the demimonde. Like others, he did his own cooking and washing. He lived in a ’dobe cabin which, because it was on the main street, had its window shades always down.

But there was one little custom of his British routine he never abandoned and this was discovered by accident. He stopped in John Lambert’s saloon one evening before going to his cabin for dinner. He left his watch on the bar and had gone before Lambert noticed it. An hour later Lambert, having an opportunity to get away, took the watch to the cabin. John thus reported what he saw: “He was eating his dinner and bigod – he had on a white shirt, wing collar, and swallow tail.”

Ballarat chuckled but no one suggested a lynching party. They knew how deep grow the roots in the soil one loves. “Maybe,” said Lambert, “that’s why John Bull always wins the last battle. They give up nothing.”

A familiar figure throughout Death Valley country was Johnny-Behind-the-Gun – small and wiry and as much a part of the land as the lizard. His moniker was acquired from his habit of settling disputes without cluttering up the courts. Johnny, whose name was Cyte, accounted for three or four sizable fortunes. Having sold a claim for $35,000 he once bought a saloon and gambling hall in Rhyolite, forswearing prospecting forever.

Johnny advertised his whiskey by drinking it and the squareness of his game, by sitting in it. One night the gentleman opposite was overwhelmed with luck and his pockets bulged with $30,000 of Johnny’s money. Having lost his last chip, Johnny said, “I’ll put up dis place. Ve play vun hand and quit.”

Johnny lost. He got up, reached for his hat. “Vell, my lucky friend, I’ll take a last drink mit you.” He tossed the liquor, lighted a cigar. “Goodnight, chentlemen,” he said. “I go find me anudder mine.”

Johnny had several claims near the Keane Wonder in the Funeral Mountains, held by a sufferance not uncommon among old timers, who respected a notice regardless of legal formalities.

Senator William M. Stewart, Nevada mining magnate, had employed Kyle Smith, a young mining engineer to go into the locality and see what he could find. Smith, a capable and likable chap, in working over the districts, located several claims open for filing by reason of Johnny’s failure to do his assessment work.

It is not altogether clear what happened between Johnny and Smith, but Smith’s body was found after it had lain in the desert sun all day. There being no witnesses the only fact produced by sheriff and coroner was that Smith was dead. Johnny went free. Other escapades with Johnny-Behind-the-Gun occurred with such frequency that he was finally removed from the desert for awhile as the guest of the state.

In a deal with Tom Kelly, Johnny was hesitant about signing some papers according to an understanding. His trigger quickness was explained to Kelly who was not impressed. He went to Johnny and asked him to sign up. Johnny refused. Kelly said calmly, “Johnny, do you see that telephone pole?”

“Yes, I see. Vot about?”

“If you don’t sign, you’re going to climb it.” Johnny signed. He put his gun away when he acquired a lodging house at Beatty, where he died in 1944.

Reminiscing one day in the old saloon he had owned, Chris Wichts slapped the bar: “I’ve taken as much as $65,000 over this old bar in one month.” He had none of it now but in a little cabin in Surprise Canyon with a stream running by his door, and a memory that retained only the laughs of his life, he didn’t need $65,000.

“A city fellow came into the cafe one day. Snooty sort. I told him we had some nice tender burro steaks. He flew off the handle. Said he wanted porterhouse or nothing. I served him. When he finished he apologized for being rude and said his porterhouse was good as he ever ate. I went into the kitchen and came back with a burro shank, shoved it in his face and said, ‘Mister, you ate the meat off this burro leg.’ I thought he’d murder me.”

One day when Ballarat travel was heavy, a dapper passenger dropped off the stage, entered the saloon, bought a drink and paid for it with a $20 gold piece, getting $19.50 in change. When he’d gone, Shorty Harris standing by said: “Chris, that money doesn’t sound right.”

Chris examined it. The gold piece had been split, hollowed out and filled with alloy. Chris worried awhile, then brightened when he noticed his place was full of loafers playing solitaire; pulling at soggy pipes; waiting for a “live one.” “Boys,” said Chris, “old Whiskers ain’t getting much play. Let’s go down and see him.”

Whiskers was his competitor down the street.

A few moments later the bat-wing doors of Whiskers’ place flew open and Chris and his bums swarmed in. Chris laid an arm on the bar. “What’ll it be fellows?” Then he turned to the loafers along the walk “Line up, you guys and have a drink.”

They did and when the drinks were downed, Chris laid the phony gold piece on the bar, received his change and with his crowd returned to his bar. An hour later he was still laughing to himself over the trick he’d played on Whiskers when his own sawed-off doors flapped open and Whiskers barged in, followed by his own mob of moochers. Whiskers ordered for the house and laid down the $20. Chris gulped and gave the change.

That coin circulated in every store and saloon in Ballarat for more than a year. Everybody knew it was phony, but accepted it without question and came to regard it with something akin to affection. Then one day a gentleman in spats came along and the $20 gold piece left forever.

Billy Heider, a slim, genial fellow who had been a hat salesman in a smart toggery shop in Los Angeles came not for gold but to escape alimony. His easy smile masked a stubbornness that nothing could conquer. “… she got a smart lawyer and dated the Judge,” Billy said.

He hung his bench-made suit on a peg, slipped into overalls, cut off one sleeve of his tuxedo to cover a canteen, spread the rest on the floor beside his bed to step on in the morning and so – transition. Eventually he began to prospect, kept at it for 20 years; found nothing, but he beat alimony.

Usually mines were “salted” in shaft or tunnel to separate the sucker from his money, but it remained for a Ballarat woman to find a simpler way.

Michael Sherlock, known as Sparkplug, because of continual trouble with that feature of his automobile, gave me her formula: “She owned a claim in Pleasant Canyon that had a showing of gold. She wanted $10,000 for it. A rich auto dealer came along to look at it. He was worth at least $5,000,000. She told him to take his mining engineer and get his own samples and when he got back she’d have a chicken dinner waiting.

“They got the samples, came down, parked the car in front of her house, got their bellies full of chicken and went back to the city. A couple of days later the millionaire was back. Couldn’t get his money into her hands quick enough. Word went out there would be work enough for all comers and we figured on boom times. But he couldn’t find ore to match her samples.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“While he was eating chicken dinner that night, her Indian hired man went out to his auto and switched samples.”

I asked Sparkplug why he didn’t sue her.

“If you had $5,000,000 would you want the whole dam’ state laughing at you?”

Randsburg, which boomed in the early Eighties as a result of gold strikes in the Yellow Aster, the King Solomon, and later the Kelly silver mine, soon became one of the principal eastern gateways to the Panamint and to Death Valley by way of Granite Wells and Wingate Pass.