SOME HALF-WILD BURROS WANDERED AROUND SILVER LAKE
SOME HALF-WILD BURROS WANDERED AROUND SILVER LAKE
A number of half wild burros wandered around among the little houses attracted by the watering-trough though there was hardly anything for them to eat. The soil is said to be so alkali that nothing will grow there even under irrigation. A patch of grass six feet by two, carefully cherished by the Brauers, was the only green thing in town. We saw the list of electors nailed to the door of the general store. There were seven names on it.
A lonesome little railroad comes along the edge of the Devil's Playground from Ludlow on the Santa Fé, past Silver Lake to the mining camps of Nevada. All the supplies for the neighborhood are hauled in on it through a country of shifting sand where no wagon-road can be maintained. Even a railroad, the symbol of civilization, cannot break the solitude. Great arteries of life like the Santa Fé and the Southern Pacific become very tiny veins when theycross the desert; the little Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad hardly seems to exist. You do not see the track until you stumble over it, the telegraph poles are lost in the sagebrush. There are two trains a week, up in the morning and down at night. During breakfast on train-day a long hoot suddenly cuts the stillness you have grown accustomed to. You jump. Mr. Brauer chuckles at you and finishes his coffee and his anecdote, and gets up ponderously and knocks the ashes out of his pipe and says:
"I guess she'll be here pretty soon now."
Presently you see him sauntering over to the station. In about fifteen minutes an ungainly line of freight-cars with a passenger-coach or two in the rear comes swaying along. Mrs. Brauer gathers up the dishes leisurely. She hopes they have brought the meat. The last time she had boarders they didn't bring any meat for two weeks. If they bring it she promises to make you a fine German dinner. She never goes out to look at the train. Nobody does, except you, who stand in the doorway and wonder at it. Ever so long ago you used to seethings that resembled it. It is a curiosity like the strange, long neck of the giraffe. Like the giraffe it has a momentary interest. It goes, and the silence settles down again with a great yawn.
The dry lake on whose shores the town is situated is three miles wide and eighteen miles long, of a brownish-purple color. The surface is hard and covered with little ripples like petrified waves. It is the sink, or outlet of the Mojave River, whose wide, torn bed we had seen at Barstow spanned by an iron bridge. The river-bed had been as dry as any part of the desert, and we had supposed it was just an unusually wide, deep wash. We now learned that in times of heavy rains or much snow in the northern mountains the Mojave River thunders under the iron bridge. On a later trip, when we were staying at the Fred Harvey Hotel in Barstow, we once saw it come to life over-night. In the evening its bed lay dry and white under the moonlight, in the morning it was full of hurrying, turbid water. From Barstow the river-bed winds through the desert to the purple-brown basin at Silver Lake. Were the Mojavea normal river its water would always flow down there and the hard dry lake would be blue with little white waves running before the wind, but it is a desert-river and gets lost in the sand. Occasionally the water flows past Barstow, but it hardly ever arrives at Silver Lake. It came once in the memory of the present inhabitants, and covered the dry lake to a depth of three or four feet. The water gradually evaporated and in a few weeks was gone. Our kind entertainers showed us pictures which they had taken of the real lake with boats on it. At that time both the town and the railroad were in the lake-bed and had to be hastily removed before the oncoming flood. An amusing incident happened one day at dinner when an artist from San Francisco, who had stopped off on his way to paint in Nevada, was boasting of the marvels of his city risen from the great fire and earthquake.
"Well," remarked our host with the same subterranean chuckle that he lavished upon us, "Silver Lake ain't so bad. We pulled her up out of the water once already."
We tried to imagine the great expanse of living water, how it would ripple and shine at its edges, and the purple mountain-tops would be mirrored in it. Once the mirage had come true.
Every day we watched the dream water increase and diminish at the base of the black mountain with the tongue of silver sand running up it. The illusion was always best in the morning, but never quite vanished while the sun shone. It was so perfect that incredulity at last compelled us to drive down the eighteen miles of the lake-bed and explore it.
Brauer's eyes twinkled as he filled our gasoline tank. "You think the lake ain't dried up yet, hey?" We kept our thoughts to ourselves.
The first surprise was when we reached the end of the lake and had not reached the mountain. It looked just the same except that the water had vanished—hidden maybe by the brush that covered the sand. Our host had said something about a road, but we had been so sure that the mountain was at the edge of the lake that we had not listened carefully enough and failed to find it, so we left the car andwalked through the brush. The bushes were very small and starved, growing several yards apart on ground that was hard and covered with little bright stones like packed-down gravel. The most flourishing shrub was the desert-holly with gray, frosted leaves shaped exactly like the leaves of Christmas holly, and small lavender berries. The following Christmas Mrs. Brauer sent us great wreaths made of it and tied with red ribbons to decorate our homes, a happy present that brought the hot brightness of the desert into the gloom of an eastern winter. As we walked among the little bushes the sun was very hot and the mountain seemed to travel away as fast as we approached it. The second surprise was when it also vanished entirely and three black hills stood in its place. They were ugly and looked like heaps of coal. The beautiful peak which we had seen was some ten miles further back on the main range which shut off the Devil's Playground. It had composed with the three black hills to form the symmetrical mass. There was no water either, and no trees.
The desolation was stark and sad; sand and sand with hardly any brush reached to the distant range. The palace of dreams was gone. Disillusioned, we climbed upon the nearest coal-pile, then suddenly we saw the miracle again, in the north this time, whence we had come. The town of Silver Lake was mirrored in blue water as shining and as heavenly as the vision which was lost. The houses had weathered a deep orange and burned in the sun. The white tank set upon stilts above the well was dazzling to look at. Trees grew beside the glistening dream-water. It was brighter than any town or lake could possibly be; it was magical.
Thus the desert keeps beckoning to you. Either the unknown goal, or the known starting-point, or perhaps both at the same time, are magical; only "here" is ever dreary. While we sat on the coal-pile Mojave related a parable:
"Once three brothers slung their canteens over their shoulders and came to me. They traveled many days toward my shining. They were often thirsty and very tired. Presently they came to a spring, and when they had resteda dispute arose. The eldest brother wished to hasten on, but the second said that my shining appeared no nearer than at the beginning. Nay, he did not believe in it, he would stay where he was. The youngest, however, agreed to accompany his eldest brother and the two set out once more. They crossed high mountain-ranges and deep valleys, but my shining was always before or after. In the seventh valley the youngest brother also began to doubt me and refused to go any further.
"'I will stay here,' he said, 'these bushes have little cool shadows beside them, and the ground is bright with little colored stones and there are flowers. Stay also and let us be happy.'
"But the eldest brother would not stay.
"He traveled all the years of his life toward my shining. The second brother turned the spring into a lake and built himself a house with orange-groves around it. The third brother rested in the cool shadows and rejoiced in the little bright stones."
We listened intently, but there was no moral.
* * * * *
In spite of our host's "Mein Gott!" we still persisted in our idea of going to Death Valley. It was now only thirty miles away where a shining such as had led the brothers on beckoned beyond the Avawatz. We learned that this route was impossible for a car, and so dry that even pack-animals could hardly enter the valley that way. However, we could make a detour of nearly two hundred miles, striking the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad again at Zabrisky or Death Valley Junction, and possibly get in that way. During the debate the sheriff of Silver Lake, a silent person decorated with pistols, volunteered to go with us beyond the Avawatz as far as Saratoga Springs, and as much further as we could drive the car. He would promise nothing as he had not been there for some time and was a cautious man, but he thought we might find it worth while. Any one of those bright paths was worth while to us, and we eagerly agreed.
That day's excursion proved even more memorable than the drive from Joburg. It was like a continuation of it, becoming ever wilderand stranger. We had already heard a few of Mojave's songs, bits of her color-songs, and her peace-songs, and underneath like a rumbling bass her terror-song—but we were as yet only acquaintances on the way to intimacy. Ever since leaving Barstow we had felt that we were advancing through progressive suggestion toward some kind of a climax. Mojave was leading us on to something. Her heart still lay beyond.
A good enough track led north along the railroad for a few miles and then swung around the base of the Avawatz. We drove up an interminable mesa where the alleged road grew always rougher and less well-marked, and the engine had an annoying tendency to boil. The wind was from behind and the heat of the sun radiating up from the white ground made it impossible to keep the engine cool. We crossed a ridge among red and purple hills of jumbled rock and began to descend into an oblong, sandy basin. The road became so unspeakable that the Sheriff advised leaving it for the white, unbroken sand of a wash. For mileswe made our own track, winding around stones and islands of brush. We were in a sort of outpost-valley south of Death Valley itself, and separated from it by what looked like a low ridge of gravel, but we no longer believed in the reality of what we thought we saw. As a matter of fact the ridge was succeeded by others, and the only way to get into the main valley was through an opening with the startling name of Suicide Pass. The valley we were in is usually considered to be a part of Death Valley; on many maps the low basins stretching north from the Avawatz for nearly a hundred miles are included under that name.
On both sides of the outpost-valley stood mountains of every hue. They were maroon, violet, or black at the base shading into lighter reds and clear yellows. One yellow mountain had a scarlet spot on its summit like a wound that bled. The dark bases of the mountains had a texture like velvet, black and purple and olive-green velvet, folded around their feet. As we descended the wash toward sea-level the heat and brightness of the sun steadily increased.Each color shown in its intensity. The bottom of the valley was streaked with deposits of white alkali that glistened blindingly. The whole world was an ecstasy of light.
Saratoga Springs is a blue pool with green rushes growing around it, in the angle of a dark red mountain. The water bubbled up from the bottom of the little pool. A marsh full of green grass and coarse, white flowers led back from the pool, spreading out into a sheet of clear water which reflected the bare mountains and the vividly green rushes. Though this real lake in the desert was a pure and lovely blue, and dazzlingly bright, it had none of the magicalness of the dream-water by the three black hills. Somehow it just missed enchantment. Henceforth we would be able to distinguish mirage by this indescribable quality.
Saratoga is the last appearance of the Armagosa, or Bitter River, before it loses itself in Death Valley. Like the Mojave River the Armagosa gets lost. It flows southward through the desert, sometimes roaring down a rocky gorge, sometimes vanishing completely formiles in a sandy stretch, then reappearing unaccountably to form oases like the one at Saratoga. Opposite the southern end of Death Valley it suddenly changes its mind and turns north on itself to enter the valley where it makes a great bog encrusted with white, alkali deposits. The Armagosa flows through an alkali desert carrying along minerals in solution, which give its water the taste that has gained for it the name of Bitter River. The water of Saratoga Springs is flat and unpleasant, though it is fit to drink. There are stories of poison-water in Death Valley, but most of the springs are merely so full of alkali and salt that they are repulsive and do not quench thirst. At Silver Lake the water is strongly alkali. Everybody uses it, but when a supply of clear spring-water can be hauled in from the mountains they all rejoice. The Sheriff's partner, Charley, had a barrel full which he shared with us while we were there. The pool at Saratoga was full of little darting fish, strange to see in the silent, lifeless waste. The Sheriff saved some of his lunch for them and sat a long time on the edge throwing incrumbs. Once, he told us, he had camped there alone for three months prospecting the hills, and they had been his friends.
We attempted to drive beyond Saratoga Springs. There was supposed to be a road, but neither Charlotte nor I could discern it. We bumped along over ground so cut by shallow water-channels that after about seven miles we dared not proceed, for a wrecked car in that shining desolation would stay forever where it smashed. We tried to walk to the top of the gravel-ridge that seemed to shut off the main valley. It looked near and innocent enough, but when we tried to reach it over the dazzling ground under the blazing sun we found, to our surprise, that we could not. The temperature was about 95 degrees, and the air very dry. The heat alone would have been quite bearable had it not been augmented by the white glare. Suddenly we realized that the little ridge was inaccessible; all the little yellow hills and ridges, and the rocky crests that shone like burnished metal, were likewise inaccessible. The realization brought a terrifying sense of helplessness.Here was a country you could not travel over: though your goal were in sight you might never reach it. The strength and resourcefulness you relied on for emergencies were of no avail; an empty canteen, a lost burro, a smashed car, and your history might be finished. We began to understand why this place, so gay with color, so flooded with light, so clean, so bright, was called Death Valley.
Before us was the opening in the mountains where the terrible valley itself lay. It was magnificent in the biggest sense of that big, ill-used word. On the east side rose the precipitous Panamints with a thin line of snow on their summits; opposite them the dark buttresses of the Funeral Mountains faded back into dimness. Between the ranges hung a blue haze of the quality of the sky, like the haze that had obscured the hot Imperial Valley. The mountains were majestic, immovable, their summits dwelt in the living silence. The haze had the magicalness of mirage. We longed to go on while the sun went down and the silence turned blue, for now we were certain that under thathaze, between those imposing walls, lay the climax to which Mojave had been leading us, her White Heart. She could never be more desolate, or stiller or grander. It was the logical journey's end, and what had been at first merely a casual choice of destination became a fixed goal to be reached through any hazards.
"If you go there," the old prospector had said, "you will see something you won't see anywhere else on earth."
Death Valley was the goal, but after the day at Saratoga Springs one thing was certain: no matter if we could get there in an automobile—and various expedients were suggested to make it possible, even safe—not thus would we enter the White Heart, not with the throbbing of an engine, not dependent on gasoline, not limited in time, not thwarted by roads. When we went it would be slowly, quietly, camping by the springs, making fires of the brush, sleeping under the open sky, listening, watching. We had found the outdoors on the desert a wonderful thing and we wanted to live with it a while. If the White Heart was the climax of Mojave we felt that it must be a climax of the feel of the outdoors, one of its supreme expressions. We were going on a pilgrimage to that.
Such a pilgrimage meant an outfit, either a wagon or a pack-train, and a guide. We needed a man accustomed to living on the desert, who knew the valley thoroughly, who could work in its heat and brightness, and who had the courage to take two ignorant enthusiasts there. We had lost the easy assurance with which we had talked at Joburg about going to Death Valley. No wonder the inhabitants of that town had been stunned when we said that we were on the way there! The unspeakable road beyond Saratoga Springs and the little gravel-ridge which we could not climb were sufficient warning of the nature of the undertaking. Mojave is not easily to be known as we would know her. She keeps herself to herself. The season added a further complication. Soon it would be April and the heat in the valley would be too great for us to endure. The pilgrimage must start no later than January. That meant going home and coming back. As usual the way to the valley bristled with difficulties.
We talked to the Sheriff about it. Julius Meyer was nearing fifty, a lean, strong-lookingman. He had a fine face, very somber in repose as though he had met with some lasting disappointment, but wonderfully lit by his occasional smile. His eyes had the hard clearness which living on the desert seems to produce. They looked straight at you. He said little, the kind of man who announces his decisions briefly and carries them out. Mrs. Brauer said of him: "Julius is good." Beyond her praise and the impression which he made we knew nothing of him except the incident of the little fishes and that he had lived twenty years on the desert and had once traveled the length of Death Valley with burros; but we had no hesitation in asking him to be our guide. He said it was a mad idea. Nobody ever went to Death Valley unless they expected to get something out of it, and then they took a Ford if they could find one and hurried.
"We are just like the rest of them," we told him. "We expect to get something out of it, but we can't get it in a Ford."
He finally agreed to go if we would take a wagon. He refused to consider a pack-train, saying that we would never be able to packburros, and walk beside them and ride them in the heat of the valley. He did not take the discussion very seriously, for he evidently did not expect us to return. He thought the glamor of Mojave would wear off.
Nevertheless it was a promise, and we were certain that when such a man promised we would see the White Heart. During the following summer and autumn we kept hearing snatches of Mojave's songs. A bit of pure cobalt in the depths of the woods, the flash of the sun on the tops of waves, the clear lovely blue of ruts in a sandy road echoed her. Thinking of her the eastern sun seemed a trifle pale, the gay brightness of summer a little dim. We loved the familiar, dear New England landscape, but we were under the "terrible fascination." Only the sea was like Mojave. Often Charlotte and I would take our blankets to a lonely part of the beach and spend the night there. Never before had we slept outdoors, on the ground under the stars. Knowing Mojave even a little had made us feel that it might be worth while. We found that it was.
"We have to get used to it," we told our astonished friends. "When we go to Death Valley with the wagon we will have to sleep on the ground."
We did get used to it and in December wrote the Sheriff. This telegram came:
"O. K. Julius Meyer."
When we appeared for the second time at Silver Lake in the big automobile we were greeted with even greater amazement than before. We had driven over from Barstow and traveling on the desert for pleasure is so novel an idea that everybody thought us insane. There were a few more people in town than we had found on our former visit, a commercial traveler and three or four miners, among them a brigand known as French Pete, with his head tied up in a red handkerchief. They all took a lively interest in the proposed expedition and gave advice. They were courteous, but amusement contended with wonder behind their friendly eyes. They tried to be kind and searched their minds for something good to say of the frightful valley.Each one separately told us what was its real, true attraction.
"You see the highest and the lowest spots in the United States at the same time. Mount Whitney, you know, and the bottom of the Valley."
Since we had never been able to see Mount Whitney in any of our travels on the Mojave, we wondered how we should be able to see it from the deep pit of the valley with the Panamints between, but receptivity was our rôle. The highest and lowest became a sort of slogan. Sooner or later everybody we met at Silver Lake or on our way to the valley said it. We waited for them to say it and recorded it in our diaries: "Explained about H. and L."
The Sheriff had procured a wagon drawn by a horse and a mule to start from Beatty, a hundred miles further up the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, and much credit is due him for the gravity with which he embarked on the folly. After the O. K. telegram he never expressed the slightest doubt of the feasibleness, the sanity, and even the usualness of the proceeding. Whatwe needed more than anything else was a real reason for going, seeing the desert and having an adventure with the outdoors being no reasons at all. He furnished even that. Charlotte had brought her sketching-box; he saw it among the camping-paraphernalia, asked what it was, and instantly spread the report that we were artists in search of scenery. We had the presence of mind never to deny this and by refraining from exhibitions were able to be both notorious and respectable.
We abandoned the automobile and traveled up to Beatty on the railroad, a seven hours'-journey. On the morning of train-day our bed-rolls and duffle-bags on the station-platform, and ourselves getting into the coach in knickerbockers and tough, high shoes created more excitement than Silver Lake had known for some time. Even Mrs. Brauer came out, and Mr. Brauer stood with his hands in his pockets, beaming on the crazy line of freight cars and the heads stuck out of the windows of the coaches, chuckling and chuckling. There was a Pullman from Los Angeles hitched to the tail of the train, verygrand, with all the window-shades still pulled down so early in the morning. Our guide, who felt his responsibilities, was chagrined because he could not get us places in it; but we were more than content, especially when the conductor, who had a black mustache worthy of one of Stevenson's pirates and wore no uniform, assured us that the coach was not supposed to be a smoking-car so our presence would interfere with no one's happiness. It was full of old-timers who were all remarkable for the clearness of their eyes. They were friendly and courteous, men past middle age, dressed in overalls and flannel shirts, who got off at Zabrisky and such places, where it is hard to see that a town exists. The younger men, and the more prosperous looking in business-suits were mostly bound for Tonopah, one of the most active mining-centers left in the country. During the day many of our fellow-passengers talked to us, stopping as they went up and down the aisle to sit on the arm of the opposite seat. The talk was of mining prospects, the booms of Goldfield and Tonopah, speculation in mining-shares, the slump after thewar began, the abandoned towns, the river of money that has flowed into the desert and been drunk up by the sand. They all agreed that Death Valley was a desperate place, there had never been any mining there to amount to anything. To encourage us they never failed to mention H. and L., but they thought we would find more to interest us in the mining towns of Nevada. They made them picturesque with pioneering stories.
The railroad runs along the east side of Death Valley, separated from it by a range of mountains. It follows the course of the Armagosa River as it flows south through the desert. In some places the river-bed was full of water, in others it was a dry wash. Where the water is certain large mesquites and cottonwood trees grow and the mining stations, consisting of a store and one or two houses, are nearby. The mountains along the route are scarred with mines and prospect holes. At Death Valley Junction a branch road goes to the large borax-mine at Ryan on the edge of the valley.
The country is very desolate. Soon afterleaving Silver Lake we passed a group of big sand-dunes with summits blown by the wind into beautiful, sharp edges. From that viewpoint they seemed to guard the shining illusion that always beckoned behind the Avawatz. We had seen them on the way to Saratoga, but so far off that they had looked like little mounds. They are a miniature of the Devil's Playground, that utter desolation of shifting sand south of Silver Lake where no roads are. Now we passed near enough to see their impressive size and how the wind makes their beautiful outlines. When the sand is deep and fine the wind is forever at work upon it, blowing it into dunes, changing their shapes, piling them up and tearing them down. It gradually moves them along in its prevailing direction by rolling their tops down the lee side and pushing up the windward side for a new summit. The dunes literally roll over. The artist who had boasted of his city at Silver Lake called them the "marching sands." North of the marching sands we traveled through gray-green mesas much broken by rugged, mountainous masses, a forbidding and stern land.
BEATTY, AT THE BASE OF A BIG RED MOUNTAIN
BEATTY, AT THE BASE OF A BIG RED MOUNTAIN
Beatty has a magnificent location at the base of a big, red mountain in front of a greater, indigo mass. It was once a prosperous mining town, but was at that time partly deserted and many of the small wooden houses stood empty. Every effort had been made to give the appearance of streets by fencing off yards around the houses, but it was hard to get the scheme of Beatty. The first impression was of houses set down promiscuously on the sand. Some of the yards had gardens where, by means of constant watering, fruit-trees and roses were made to grow. Beatty is at a considerable altitude so that while the noonday sun was hot the nights were cold, sometimes below freezing. The air was marvelously clear. On the brightest days in the east flowers and shrubs look as though they were floating in a pure, colorless liquid, and the vistas are softly veiled. The air seems to have substance. Among the mountains of the desert it is a flawless plate glass through which you look directly at the face of the world. Distant outlines stand out boldly, and every little shining rock and bush is set firmly down.
Prohibition had hit Beatty hard. Most of the ground-floor of the hotel consisted of a big poolroom and bar over which hung an air of sadness. We had an impression of moving-day in that forlorn hour when everything is dismantled and the van has not come. The landlady apologized for the accommodations which, however, were excellent.
"We used to keep it up real nice before mining slumped," she said, "but now there is prohibition, too, and we are clean discouraged."
She was an ingenious person. In her front yard, one of the prettiest in Beatty, the walks and flower-beds were edged with empty bottles driven in neck down. They made a fine border, durable, with a glassy glitter in the sun.
At Beatty we first encountered Molly and Bill. Molly was a white mule and Bill a big, thin, red horse. They were hitched to an ordinary grocery wagon. Our guide seemed pleased with them, but we were doubtful. He had rented them from an Indian and said that they were absolutely desert-proof, they could live onnothing at all and drink soda-water forever. Bill looked as though he had always lived on nothing at all, and Molly laid back her long, white ears in a manner unpleasantly suggestive. Moreover, it did not seem possible that the frail-looking wagon could carry the supplies and the camping equipment. We had purchased food for a month. It was both heavy and bulky; bacon, ham, potatoes, flour, canned milk and vegetables, four pounds of butter and six dozen eggs. It was the Sheriff's selection; Charlotte and I had not expected to travel de luxe like that. Indeed we had brought some dried potatoes and vegetables and had not dreamed of things like milk or butter or eggs. He made quite a stand for the real potatoes, so they had to go along. In spite of their bulk the canned milk and vegetables are almost necessities on the desert, where the water is scarce and bad, for things that have to be soaked a long time and cooked in the alkali water are hardly edible. He had a weakness for green California chilies and horehound candy, so they also were included. Charlotte insisted ondried fruit, especially prunes. The grub alone made a formidable pile on the porch of the general store. In addition there was a bale of hay and a bag of grain. It looked like very little for the dejected Molly and Bill, but the Sheriff said that we could buy more at Furnace Creek Ranch in the bottom of the valley, and that we need only feed them while we were actually in the valley, for as soon as we went up a little way on either side they could forage. We looked anxiously out over the environs of Beatty, which is fairly high-up. They were precisely like the environs of Silver Lake, where the half-wild burros can scarcely find a living. We began to worry in earnest. By the time the food for man and beast was on the wagon worry turned to despair. It was full, and the three beds, the duffle-bags, the sketch-box which we clung to as the only proof of sanity, and the three five-gallon gasoline cans for carrying water were still on the ground.
"It can't be done," we told the Sheriff. "You will have to make some other arrangement."
"Now look here," he replied. "You stopworrying. Nobody in this outfit is to worry except me. That's my job. It's what I'm for."
His hard blue eyes looked into ours with determination, then he grinned and from that moment became the Official Worrier.
Slowly and patiently he built up a monumental structure and cinched it with rope and baling wire. Everything found a place. As we expected to make a spring that night it was not necessary to fill the gasoline cans. They were hung on the back of the load with more baling-wire. Remembering the day when it had been 95 degrees at Saratoga Springs we tried to leave our heavy driving-coats behind, but were forcibly forbidden to do so. They were added to the topmost peak.
For two days all Beatty, from the leading citizen who sold us our supplies to the Mexican cook in the railroad restaurant who told us that it was so hot in Death Valley the lizards had to turn over on their backs and wave their feet in the air to cool them, had been much cheered by our presence. Nobody expected us to be gone very long and they watched the loading up ofthe month's supplies with amused interest. When we were ready we had to pose beside the wagon in the middle of the street to have our picture taken. Then somebody cried "Good luck!" and at last we started.
As soon as a turn in the road hid Beatty the silence closed around us. The crisp, clear air made our blood tingle. We walked the first few miles while the Worrier drove. The sun, the wind, and the scarred old mountains became the only important things in the world. We were committed to sunrise and sunset, rocks and brush were to be our companions, lonely springs were to keep us alive, the roots of the greasewood were to warm us, all our possessions were contained in one frail wagon. In half an hour the desert claimed us. The sun that loves the desert clothed it in colored garments.
The way to Death Valley from Beatty is across a shallower valley and through Daylight Pass at an elevation of 4,317 feet. First the road winds down around small, rough hills, at whose base the deserted town of Ryolite is situated. Ryolite is what remains of a mining boom. It is pushed into a cove of a rose-colored mountain—but desert mountains change their hues so often that it may not always be rose. Ryolite is a typical American ruin. Its boom was very brief. The town sprang up over-night. Money was poured in. Water was brought for miles in a pipe-line, a railroad from Beatty begun, and permanent buildings erected—it had the pride of a "thirty thousand dollar hotel," and a bank to match. Immense energy and enthusiasm of youth, middle-aged greed, too, with its eye on the immediate main chance, wentinto its making. No doubt some people profited by the building of Ryolite. It was a tumult of "American initiative"—then it did not pay. It is easy to picture the promoters, their important hurry, their "up-to-date methods," their big talk. It is easy to picture the investors too. Nearly everybody who has money to invest buys stock in a gold mine once. Great hopes converged on the desert here from many a board-sidewalked town and prairie-farm; futures were built on it. There is a throb in the throat for Ryolite, fading into the mountain, its corrugated-iron roofs rusting red like the hills. The desert is licking the wound with her sandy tongue until not even a scar will remain. Sooner or later she heals all the little scratches men make on her surface.
The dead town faced a wide valley stretching like a green meadow to the opposite mountains. The thick sagebrush melted together into a smooth sward over which cloud-shadows floated. The sun evoked lovely, changing color-tones from it, like a musician playing upon his instrument, making harmonics of violet and brown andsage-green flow beneath a melody of pure blue. A perfectly straight road cut a white line through the meadow. The distance was ten miles, but no one unaccustomed to the clear air of the desert would guess it to be more than three. The road appeared level with a slight rise under the western mountains which had strong, dark outlines on the sky. They looked purple and their lower masses kept emerging from the main range and fading again as the shadows circled.
It took Molly and Bill a long time to travel the straight, white line. By turn we drove and walked, as the three of us could not ride in the wagon at once. Already the superiority of this mode of travel over Fords was being demonstrated. We felt the simple bigness of the desert, and were intimate with the indigo shadow under each little bush, and the bright-colored stones; we had time to make digressions to some new cactus or strange-looking rock while Molly and Bill plodded on. For hours we crossed the valley, hardly seeming to progress. The same landscape was always before us, yet we were inthe midst of a changing pageant. Soon Ryolite was lost in a mass of pale rose and blue that seemed like a gate to another world. The knowledge that the mountains were made of dull-red, crumbling rock, and that only Beatty lay behind them could not destroy the illusion. It grew fairer as we left it. The dark mountains in front became formidable silhouettes as the afternoon sun inclined toward them. We could never quite see the canyon by which we were to reach the pass; several times we thought we saw it, only to lose it again in the subtleties of shifting shadows.
THE OUTFIT
THE OUTFIT
Soon after crossing the middle of the valley the road began a long, brutal ascent. Mile after mile it steadily climbed until the sweat made furrows in the shaggy coats of Molly and Bill; but to us, walking ahead of the wagon, the valley looked level as before, and only our greater exertion convinced us of the rise. Here was one of the characteristic mesas of the Mojave; nothing is quite flat there except the narrow bottoms of the valleys. Suddenly the road reached the outposts of the mountain and became muchsteeper through the sandy wash of a canyon. The walls on either side gradually grew higher and the sand deeper. The ungainly load proved almost too much for the desert-proof steeds. At times we all three had to push, and we often had to stop to rest. Night came while we were still toiling upward. It was cold, and a bitter wind blew between the walls. During one of the halts the Worrier gathered up some bits of wood by the roadside, the remains of a ruined shack, and thrust them under the cinch-ropes.
"We'll need them," he said, buttoning his inadequate coat to the chin. "We're in luck."
"You'll find we're always in luck," we told him through chattering teeth.
At last Molly and Bill succeeded in reaching the top of the pass. The spring was still half a mile away in the side of a mountain. We did not attempt to take the wagon there, but the Worrier took the tired animals and brought back the water while Charlotte and I found a place fairly sheltered from the wind in the bottom of a wash, lugged down the bits of firewoodand the "kitchen," and began to cook our first meal on the desert. Soon we heard the Worrier shouting unintelligible things. Much alarmed we scrambled hastily up out of the wash to find him returning, followed by a troop of wild burros. They were not in the least discouraged by his violent remarks, but came all the way and stood in a half-circle around the wagon, twitching their furry ears. He was noisily vehement. He said that they would steal and eat anything from our blankets to his precious chilies sealed up in tin cans; that they had no conscience, they were the pirates of the desert. During dinner he kept making excursions to the top of the wash to throw stones at them. He guarded the wagon all night by sleeping under it, a practice which he continued throughout the trip, greatly tranquilizing our minds. Burros and coyotes were the only marauders, and we knew that they would have a hard time of it. Charlotte and I dragged our bed-rolls a little way down the wash. It was a wild night. The stars had an icy glitter and the wind made dismal noises among the fearsome-looking mountain-tops; beforemorning it snowed a little, but we were too tired to care.
The rising sun awoke us. It leapt up over the mountains; soon every trace of the light snow was gone, the ground dry, and the air warm. From Daylight Springs a fairly good track led down eight miles to the northern rim of Death Valley. Near the end of the descending canyon Corkscrew Mountain appeared, a symmetrical mass, striking both on account of its red color like crumbling bricks and for the perpendicular cliff which spirals around it like a corkscrew. Through the field-glass the cliff was a dark violet and might be a hundred or more feet high. Corkscrew Mountain stands out boldly from its fellows, nor while we were in the valley did we ever lose sight of its sun-bright bulk. It became our landmark in the north.
Opposite Corkscrew Mountain the road turned abruptly around a point of rock. Charlotte and I were walking ahead of the wagon, we went gayly to the end of the promontory and were brought to a sudden stop by what we saw. There, without any warning of its nearness, likean unexpected crash of orchestral music, lay the terrible valley, the beautiful, the overwhelming valley.
The Official Worrier stopped the wagon. Though he thought us insane, though he declared he could see none of the colors and enchantments we had been pointing out to him, he was moved. From the look that came into his eyes we knew that, whether he admitted it or not, like Shady Myrick he was under the terrible fascination of Mojave. That, after all, was why he had been willing to come with us to the White Heart.
"Well," he said brusquely, "that's her!"
We all stood silent then. We were about three thousand feet above the bottom of the valley looking down from the north over its whole length, an immense oblong, glistening with white, alkali deposits, deep between high mountain walls. We knew that men had died down there in the shimmering heat of that white floor, we knew that the valley was sterile and dead, and yet we saw it covered with a mantle of such strange beauty that we felt it was the noblest thing we had ever imagined. Only a poet couldhope to express the emotion of beauty stronger than fear and death which held us silent moment after moment by the point of rock. Perhaps some day a supreme singer will come around that point and adequately interpret that thrilling repose, that patience, that terror and beauty as part of the impassive, splendid life that always compasses our turbulent littleness around. Before terror and beauty like that, something inside you, your own very self, stands still; for a while you rest in the companionship of greatness.
The natural features which combined to produce this tremendous effect came slowly to our understanding. They were so unlike anything in our experience, even of the wonders of the outdoors, that they bewildered us. The strange can only be made comprehensible by comparison to the familiar, and perhaps the best comparison is to a frozen mountain-lake. The smooth, white bottom of the valley looks more like a frozen lake than like anything else, and yet it looks so little like a lake that the simile does not come easily to the mind. Death Valley is level like a lake, it is bare like a lake, cloud-shadows driftover it as over a lake, the precipitous mountains seem to jut into it as mountains jut into a lake, but there the comparison ends and its own unfamiliar beauties begin.
Evanescent streaks and patches of color float over the shining floor between the changing hills. It reflects them. Sometimes a path made of rose tourmalines crosses it, or a blue patch lies near one edge as though a piece of the sky had fallen down. Lines of pure cobalt, pools of smoky blue, or pale yellow, or pink lavender are there, all quiveringly alive. At times the white crust shines like polished silver, at others it turns sullenly opaque. Now a blue river flows down the center—now it moves over under the western wall—now it gathers itself into a pond around which green rushes grow.
High above the middle of the valley tower the Panamint Mountains. That winter their summits were covered with snow as white as the white floor, and as shining. Without apparent break into foothills they rise nearly 12,000 feet. Seldom, even in the highest ranges, can you see so great a sheer rise, for most mountains areapproached from a considerable elevation. In Death Valley the eye begins its upward journey below sea-level. Down there the white floor shimmered and seemed to move while above it the two peaks of Telescope and Mount Baldy, joined by a long curving ridge of snow, were a remote, still whiteness.
The eastern wall of the valley is not so high, but is hardly less impressive. The Funeral Mountains are steel-blue with layers of white rock near their summits. Both the mountains and the valley were named because of tragedies down on that white floor during pioneering and prospecting days. It is impossible to get the details of the stories from the old-timers, each has a different version and no one is very clear even about his own. One story is of a party of emigrants, men, women, and children, on the way to the gold-fields with all their household goods, who entered the valley by mistake and could not find a way out; another is of a party who were attacked by Indians and fought in a circle they made of their wagons until the last man was killed. The remains of the wagonsare said to be buried in the sand near a place called Stovepipe Wells. We never could learn the exact location, though on a later trip we met a man who said that he had once actually found them, and that he had seen Indians around there wearing jewelry and using utensils which they could only have obtained from the white man sometime in the fifties. There are also stories of individual prospectors who perished on the burning sands. It does not matter which particular tragedy fastened such names on this region of celestial day, they commemorate all whose last sight of the earth was that lonely splendor.
The Funeral Range is separated by a deep canyon from the Black Mountains which continue the eastern wall of the valley. This wall is from five to six thousand feet high, jutting into the basin in great promontories as mountains jut into a rock-ringed lake. The range across the southern end is not so high and was half hidden by an opalescent haze. All the time we were in the valley that haze persisted. Only rarely and for short periods could we see anydetail in the depths of the hot basin, though the foreground sparkled in the stark, clear air. The Imperial Valley and Death Valley are always hung with misty curtains.
A long, long slope leads from the rock promontory from which we first saw the valley down to that shimmering pit. It is very rocky, cut by washes and sparsely covered with sagebrush and greasewood. Occasional little yellow or blue hills rise like islands from blue-green waves. The ground is covered with little stones of every conceivable color, which flash back the sunlight from their polished surfaces. Unfamiliar green and purple stones lie around, and bright red stones, and a stone of a strange orange-color like flame. A mass of this is what we must have seen at Saratoga Springs on the mountain that bled. The impulse to pick up specimens was irresistible. This proved to be the curse of walking over the bright mosaics. Each little stone was of a color or texture more alluring than the last until our pockets became unbearably heavy. Every resting-time was spent in trying to decide which ones to throw away, butas we could not possibly throw one away on the same day that we picked it up, this was a fruitless occupation.
About noon we lunched in the shade of one of the little hill-islands. During the descent the heat had steadily increased and the sun shone with white, blinding intensity. The Official Worrier grew expansive and happy. He described himself as a "desert rat," and said that the hot brilliance suited him entirely. He called it a pleasant, warm day. Charlotte and I were continually looking at the little blue spots of shade behind a bush or projecting rock to rest our eyes. We could no longer look away over the valley, objects merged and vanished there. One of my recurring dreams since childhood is of trying to walk or run in a light so dazzling that I could not keep my eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time. That day my dream strikingly came true. Everywhere bright heat-waves ran over the ground. The surface of stones and the tips of leaves glittered dazzlingly. It was probably no hotter than it had been at Saratoga, but the reflection of light fromthe immense white bottom of the valley was an almost unbearable brightness.
Our destination was an abandoned gold-mine on the side of the Funeral Range. From the lunch-place the Keane Wonder Mine looked on a level with us and quite near, but we traveled two hours and made a stiff climb to reach it. This was the hardest bit of marching that we did, for we were too ignorant of the effects of such a combination of heat and blinding light to know how to conduct ourselves. We thought we were sick or overtired, and being much too proud to let the Worrier suspect such a thing, pressed on without stopping often enough to rest. We had not yet learned that the wagon was always accompanied by a blessed bit of shade that we could sit down in any time. Later we appreciated fully this happy attribute of wagons. More than once we were grateful to the Worrier for refusing to come with a pack-train.
The mine was a large plant which had paid well. A mess of buildings, some half-blown-down, pieces of machinery and the big red millhuddled at the mouth of the canyon where the mountain rises steeply from the mesa. The mine itself was higher up the canyon down which the ore was swung in huge buckets that ran on iron cables. Water had been piped from a spring a mile away, but the pipe was broken. The ground was far too rough to allow us to take the wagon to the spring, so once more the Worrier led off Molly and Bill and brought back water in a pail. Earlier in the day we had lamented the necessity of camping among wreckage, but when we reached the first building, which once had been a barn, its oblong, indigo shadow was Heaven. We lay prone on the ground behind it until the sun went down, not attempting to unload the wagon or do any useful thing. The Worrier found us thus on his return and gravely opined that we had better stay a while at Keane Wonder and try to get acclimated.