CHAPTER XIII.FRUITLESS SEARCHES—MET A STREAK OF HARD LUCK—BUT LATER HE STOOD ON THE SUN-KISSED SUMMIT.
FRUITLESS SEARCHES—MET A STREAK OF HARD LUCK—BUT LATER HE STOOD ON THE SUN-KISSED SUMMIT.
THE winter of 1871-2 was spent at Del Norte, and in the following spring Creede, with a party of prospectors, went to Elizabethtown, New Mexico. This town was a new one, but was attracting considerable attention as a placer field. Like a great many other mining camps, the place was overdone, and unless a man had money to live on, the outlook was not very cheerful. Finding no work to do the young prospector staked a placer claim and commenced operations single-handed and alone, and the end of the third day, cleaned up and found himself in possessionof nine dollars’ worth of gold dust. This gave him new courage. He worked all the summer; but when winter came on, he discovered that after paying his living expenses which are always lofty in a new camp, he had only made fair wages; the most he had made in a single day was nine dollars.
The winter following found the prospector in Pueblo again, working for another stake, this time in the employ of Mr. George Gilbert. Early in the spring of 1873, he took the trail. Upon this occasion, he found his way to Rosita in Custer County where the famous Bassick Mine was afterward discovered, and within a few miles of Silver Cliff, which was destined to attract the attention of so many prospectors, bringing into the mining world so much shadow and so little shine.
From Rosita he went to the San Juan district and prospected for several months, returned to the east side of the range, and finally made a second trip to the San Juan, but found nothing worth the assessment work.
About this time the Gunnison country began to attract attention and with other fortune-seekers Creede went there. This trip, like all his prospecting tours west of the “Great Divide” panned poorly. Never did he make a discovery of importance on the western slope, and now he made a trip to Leadville. Here he met with a well-defined streak of hard luck. After hunting in vain for a fortune, he was taken with pneumonia, lingered for a long time between life and death, but finally recovered. If Creede had died then, he would have received, probably, four lines in theHerald, which would havebeen to the effect that a prospector had died of pneumonia in his cabin at the head of California Gulch, and had been dead some time when discovered, as the corpse was cold and the fire out. He was of no great importance at that time, but since then he has marched from Monarch to the banks of the Rio Grande, leaving a silver trail behind him, until at last, standing on the sun-kissed summit of Bachelor mountain, he can look back along the trail and see the camp-fires that he lighted with tired hands, trembling in the cold, burning brightly where the waste places have been made glad by the building of hundreds of happy homes.
Death of “Bob” FordDEATH of “BOB” FORDREMOVING THE BODY
DEATH of “BOB” FORDREMOVING THE BODY
Creede has labored long and faithfully for what he has, never shrinking from the task the gods seem to have set before him. Almost from his infancy he has been compelled to dobattle with the world alone, and the writer is proud of the privilege of telling the story of his life, giving credit where credit is due, and putting the stamp of perfidity upon the band of stool-pigeons who have camped on his trail for the purpose of claiming credit for what he did.