In Arizona 
III.—The Old-Timer’s Story of Gold Hunting 
and Indian Fighting in the 
Cocopah Mountains 
By J. W. SCHULTZ 
Author of “Ny Life as an Indian,” “Life Amon'g the Blackfeet,” “Floating Down the Missouri,” etc. 
W E had been hunting deer, the Old-Timer 
and I, and finding none. Tracks of 
them there were aplenty criss-crossing 
the sandy arroyos; for four hours we had been 
expecting at every moment to get our meat; 
it had been hard work scrambling along the 
rough mountainside and now the day grew ho''; 
we came to a big, wide branching ironwood 
tree and sat down in its shade to rest. The 
Old-Timer filled and lighted his rank and 
ancient pipe; I moved to windward of ‘the 
stifling smoke and rolled a cigarette. We sat 
silent a long time, gazing at the gray and green 
desert and its black bare mountain ranges 
stretching south, and east and west to the far 
horizon. 
“You never heard of Cocopah Joe, I ’spose,” 
said my companion reminiscently. “No, of 
course you never did; he’s dead these many 
years. He was a sailor first off, and the sailin’ 
ship he was on come in to the mouth of the 
Colorado with a cargo of stuff for Yuma and 
other up-river points. The stuff had to be 
taken by lighters in over the bar to the little 
flat-bottom, stern-wheel river boats. Somehow 
or other, Joe didn’t make the right fastenin’ 
to a big boxed-up pianner; it slipped out of the 
net kersmash onto the deck of the lighter, and 
flew into about a thousand pieces. The - mate 
took a club and went for him. About a minute 
later the mate lay dead in the hold, and Joe, 
hurrying to the deck and never giving a thought 
to the swarms of sharks, jumped overboard and 
swam the couple of miles to shore. 
“ ‘Let him go,’ said the captain to the other 
mate, who wanted to lower a boat and take 
after him. ‘We got no time now and we’ll 'et 
him starve over there on the sands until we 
have the cargo all out; then we’ll catch him an’ 
put him in irons.’ 
“*Did they get him? not on your life! They 
hunted the shore, they went up river as far as 
the ship yard, but no Joe; not a sign nor a 
trace of him anywhere. Because why; he’d fell 
in with a band of Cocopah Indians and gone 
away out with them into the desert. In time 
he got him a woman of the tribe and camped 
with her people till he died. Mostly, these 
people lived on the bottom lands of the Colo 
rado, and over on Hardy’s Colorado; but at 
times they wandered around a good bit, coming 
up river, and up the Salt and Gila valleys, and 
in that way Joe always being with ’em, I got 
to know him. 
“I was in Yuma one fall, laying around 
listening to the prospectors and trying to make 
up my mind where next to go in search of the 
yellow stuff, when Cocopah Joe blew in one day. 
‘Come on with me,’ says he. ‘We’ll do some 
prospectin’ over on Hardy’s Colorado. I think 
they’s a good chance to find something in the 
range that runs alongside of it.’ 
“We started the next day, Joe, his woman and 
I on a raft of drift logs we bunched together, 
and sending our burros and some of our truck 
down overland with the band of Injuns Joe was 
traveling with. 
“I sure enjoyed that three days of drifting. 
You talk about ducks, and geese, and sand¬ 
hill cranes: down in that country is where you 
find ’em in winter; millions and millions of ’em. 
The San Joaquin valley of California ain’t a 
marker to it. They’s other game there, too; 
lots of little whitetail deer in the brushy bot¬ 
toms, and back in the mountains, mountains 
for all the world like this one. bighorn—lots of 
’em, and hurro deer. What’s burro deer? Why, 
the3'’re great big blacktail deer, twice as big as 
these here that we’ve been trailin’ around all 
the morning. 
“Our raft was of cottonwood logs, heavy and 
spongy, and it drew most three feet of water. 
Every little while we would scrape onto a sand 
bar, hard and fast, and then Joe would set 
down on a box of canned stuff and say, as he 
rolled a cigarette: ‘Push her off, old woman, 
push her off; we haint got time to be layin' 
here all day.’ Overboard she’d go, and heave 
and push and pry, and I would, too, but Joe, 
never a move would he make, but just set on 
his box and let the cigarette smoke curl out of 
his nose, him admirin’ it as it drifted away. 
“ ‘Dog-gone 3'ou,’ says I to him one day, when 
the raft was stuck extra hard, ‘get in here and 
help push. You’re the laziest man I ever met 
up with.’ 
“ ‘Friend, I’m not lazy,’ he replied. ‘I’d help 
all right if ’twas you and me alone, but I 
dasn’t as ’tis. You see, it’s this way: this here H 
woman of mine respects me a whole lot; thinks 
they’s nothin’ good enough for me; believes it’s 
her duty to do the work while I set back and jH 
look on. Now, if I should waller in and help ■ 
push off, right there she’d lose all regard for H 
me. Right there she’d begin tryin’ to do the ’B 
bossin’ and the mischief would be to pay. No, H 
friend, I can’t help you. Dig in, old woman! B 
heave now. You ain’t half tryin’.’ 1 
“Well, maybe he was right; them Indian I 
women, you know, are different. He sure got I 
along fine with her, and she, why she just loved -■ 
to wait on him; you could see plain that she 
thought the world and all of him. She was tall 
and straight, and just the right sort of slim¬ 
ness, and quick and strong, to boot, and her 
strength was all for him. 
“The third day we got down to the mouth of - 
Hardy’s Colorado, which is nothin’ but a great 
big slough of brackish water—the tide running 
into it—some thirty miles long and in places a 
mile or so wide. There we found the big Cocrt- 
pah camp, and that evening the band from > 
Yuma came in bringing our - burros and outfit 
all right. We had a big feast of clams that 
night and some fried fi!fh. The water was just 
alive with fish of all kinds where the two Colo- 
rados come together. 
“In the mornin’ I got up early and had a ^ 
good look around before the shimmering 
desert heat would blur everything. Off to the l 
south nothin’ but the white breakers, of the in¬ 
coming tide and the blue sea. To the east a 
long range of brown, bare low mountains. 
Away off to the west a higher range, showing j 
brown and black and white in the clear air. 
Joe had just come out. ‘That’s the range we 
want to prospect,’ I said to him'. ‘You can see 
from here that there’s been a big mix up in the 
formation; granite, and porphyry, and quartz, by 
the looks of it.’ 
“‘Yes, they’re all there all right,’ he agrees, 
‘but we don’t prospect that range none what¬ 
ever. Tons of gold may be scattered around 
on them slopes, but we’ll never see it; the 
Cocopahs won’t let any white men go in there.’ 
“ ‘What, not even you?’ I asked. 
“ ‘No, sir, not me, even, a member of the 
trihe, so to speak. I savey their language, I- 
talk with ’em about everything except them 
mountains, for at the first mention I make of 
’em they just shut up, or change the subject. 
I am not allowed to go there. I can’t find out 
why they won’t let me go. My woman even 
won’t tell me, claiming she don't know. I ex¬ 
pect, though, that there’s rich veins over in that 
range, and that the Indians think if the white 
men find ’em, their hunting ground will be 
ruined.’ 
