970 
' FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 19, 1909. 
or our burros. They might right then be sneak¬ 
ing up to the tent and kill Morris, all un¬ 
suspicious a puttering around getting breakfast. 
But no, thinks I, he’s sure savey’d them three 
shots, quicker, closer together than I could 
make my old Henry cough. No doubt he’s 
watchin’ out; prob’ly he’s rounded up the bur¬ 
ros. Well, anyhow, we’ve got into a real fine 
jack pot.’ 
“The Injuns finished skinning and cutting up 
the meat, washed- out the tripe and eat some 
of it, the other one came back, all bloody- 
handed, washed out the tripe of his animal and 
fell to eating, I watching ’em all along through 
a crack between two boulders. I was fearful 
uneasy. Would they notice our burros’ tracks 
there at the edge of the water, I wondered, 
and had we left any boot tracks thereabouts? 
If they should find any signs of us, and start 
prowling around for our trail, I made up my 
mind that I’d kill all of ’em, hurry to camp and 
pack things lively and then we would light out 
on the desert and take chances on getting safe 
back to Yuma. I’d got this all settled in my 
mind when there was some more clattering of 
gravel, and here came three women riding bur¬ 
ros. Then there was more chattering, and 
water guzzling, and tripe eating. All along I 
had thought that these were Cocopahs, although 
they might be Serais, a whole lot worse Injuns, 
regular cannibals. But now I recognized one 
of the women, a fine, slim good looking one I 
had seen several times gossiping with Mrs. 
Cocopah Joe. A man will remember a woman’s 
face a hundred times quicker than he will a 
man’s, you know. Yes, these were Cocopahs, 
all right. 
“After what to me was a fearful long time, 
the fellow who had killed up the arroyo went 
off with his woman, the rest packed their meat 
and they all lit out, the men riding on top of 
the meat and. the women walking. They 
climbed out of the arroyo and struck off due 
south, and from the fact that they had no water 
bottles with ’em, and didn’t even take a drink 
before starting, I figured that their camp 
couldn’t be far away. I watched ’em until they 
climbed over the top of the furthest ridge 
in sight—a mile or so away, then filled my 
canteen and lit out for camp. 
“I found Morris watching for me and he 
drawed a long sigh of relief when I showed up. 
The burros were tied in a bunch of mesquites, 
the tent was down and rolled in a heap. T 
heard the shooting,’ he said, ‘and knew ’twasn’t 
you, so I tied up the burros, rolled the tent so 
’twouldn’t show, and started out to investigate. 
I was slipping along mighty careful when I saw 
the women riding in to the spring and cached 
myself. I knew you was either dead or that 
they hadn’t seen you, so I just waited, a-hoping 
you was all right. Now, what are we going to 
do?’ 
“We hated to go back, we didn’t dare pack 
up and go on. Finally we decided to take the 
risk and stay right where we were, watering 
and letting the burros feed at night, and cach¬ 
ing ’em in the day time. We were in a good 
place, right under a cliff on one side of the bend 
of the arroyo, and there was a high ridge on the 
other side; except from the top of one far-off 
mountain no one could spot our outfit unless 
he stumbled right on to it. 
“We laid low that day, and the next morning 
about three o’clock, cooked a good breakfast, 
tied the burros in the grove, got a canteen of 
water from the spring and started off south¬ 
ward, quartering up the range higher than the 
Injuns had after their hunt. It was fearful 
rough going, but all the same we dropped sev¬ 
eral miles behind us in the couple of hours of 
moonlight left, and at the first sign of daybreak 
climbed to the rim of a high mesa and laid 
down in the shelter of some boulders. When 
day did break the first thing we saw was a long 
line of cottonwoods in an arroyo half a mile 
or more away to the southeast of us. As it 
grew lighter we could make out some burros; 
and then smoke began to rise above the trees. 
We had located the Injuns’ camp all right. 
“There didn’t seem to be anything for us to 
do except stay where we were all day, 'go home 
after dark and come back in the morning, and 
keep doing that until the Injuns should break 
camp and move off out of our way. But we 
were lucky. In an hour or so we saw them 
round up their burros, and not long afterward 
the whole outfit filed down the arroyo and out 
on to the desert, heading for the Colorado 
River. As soon as they were so far away that 
they couldn’t possibly see us, we jumped up 
and began hunting for float and ledges as we 
circled back toward camp. We hadn’t gone half 
a mile, when we jumped three burro buck deer 
and Morris killed one of ’em. That settled our 
prospecting for that day. Going to camp after 
a burro to pack in the meat, and then cutting 
up most of it to dry, took about all of our 
time. 
“The next morning we started out in earnesi 
and carefully examined the wash in every 
arroyo, arriving at last at the grove where the 
Indians had camped. There was a fine, big 
spring in it, and the ground thereabouts looked 
as if it had been a camping place for hundreds 
of years, being covered with broken pottery, 
obsidian and flint chippings, worn out metates 
and grinders, and actually tons of mountain 
sheep and deer bones. We followed up this 
arroyo a few hundred yards, but finding .no 
float, went on to the next one, and the first 
thing we came across was a chunk of brownish- 
black quartz showing a nice sprinkling of gold 
specks. We put in all the rest of the day work¬ 
ing up the arroyo toward the summit, examin¬ 
ing every smaller one running into it, and find¬ 
ing a little float right along in the main wash. 
It all was rich, free gold in every piece. We 
went back to camp in the evening feeling pretty 
good. We thought we would soon locate the 
vein it came from somewhere below the sum¬ 
mit of the mountain, and if we did, our fortune 
was made. 
“Always with an eye out for Injuns, we put 
in a whole week prospecting that arroyo, and 
at last found the float at the head of it, on top 
of the mountain itself, and down in the arroyo 
on the opposite side. If there had once been 
a pocket, or a vein on the summit, it had been 
of no depth and had long since been eroded away. 
We felt pretty blue. Still, as Morris said, 
’twan’t any sign we wouldn’t find gold float in 
the next wash. 
“Crossing the divide between the arroyo we 
had prospected and the one beyond, the next 
morning, we came to a trail running up it to¬ 
ward the summit of the range. A smooth, deep- 
worn, sandal-packed trail cleared of all boulders 
and stones. We followed it, curious to learn 
where it went, what was the reason for it. Al¬ 
ways on the summit of the ridge it ran up and 
up for a mile or more, then suddenly turned 
southward and slanted into the mquth of a 
deep walled canon, and on up it a little ways 
to the mouth of a cave in the foot wall. It was 
a small one, not more than fifteen feet in depth, 
as many wide, with an oval roof maybe ten 
feet above the sandy floor. Just an ordinary hole 
in the cliff, but it had in it a curious collection 
of junk. Lying on the floor was a petrified 
turtle something like two feet long, and around 
it and piled against the walls were ollas of all 
sizes and shapes, arrows, baskets, cane medicine 
pipes, human scalps stretched on hoops and 
some of them brown and gray and light haired, 
and I don’t know what all else. As soon as I 
saw it all, I saveyed right away why the Coco¬ 
pahs had not allowed Joe to prospect the range. 
This was their medicine cave, the turtle was 
one of their gods, these things their offerings 
to it, and they didn’t want the place to be seen 
by a white man, believing, no doubt, that if he 
but looked in, the turtle god would be angry 
and withdraw his favor from them. 
“This sort of squelched our hope of finding 
a big rich placer or quartz lead. The country 
wasn’t right anyhow for placer, nor for anything 
like a permanent vein, being all shot to pieces 
and fearfully jumbled. ‘What had we best do?’ 
I asked Morris, as we came out of the cave 
and turned to take a last look at it. ‘Shall we 
go on south, or turn back toward Yuma?’ 
“ ‘No use giving up,’ said he, ‘as long as our 
grub lasts. Let’s go on south and see what 
the country is like.’ 
“He had no sooner said this than, zip! came 
an arrow right between us and stuck in the 
sand. We jumped back into the cave, and fol¬ 
lowing the slant of the shaft, peeked up at the 
top of the opposite canon wall, and both raised 
our guns and fired at an Injun leaning over the 
edge of it, ready and waiting to turn loose an¬ 
other arrow. He gave a scream, toppled over 
and came whizzing down, striking the wash 
with a bone-breaking thud. He never moved. 
We waited a while, stuck our hats out on the 
end of our rifles, but saw nothing, heard not’n- 
ing. There was nothing to do but make a break 
out of the canon and onto the trail on the ridge, 
and plenty scared, our flesh just creeping with 
expectation of an arrow, or a bullet plowing 
into it, we started out on the run and never 
stopped until we got to the top of the ridge. 
“Gasping for breath, the perspiration pouring 
out of us, we looked around and saw a lone 
burro standing in the old trail not far down 
the mountain. We went to it and found it was 
tethered to a cactus. Tied on the saddle was 
a sack containing a new, painted olla—probably 
for an offering to the turtle god—a few tortillas, 
a little tobacco and corn husks. We took heart 
to believe that the fellow we had killed was 
really alone. Morris untied the burro, got on 
him and started for camp, I following after and 
using grease wood switch to make it travel, but 
the beast was too slow for us, Morris soon got 
off of it, we snatched off its saddle and rope, 
flung them into a cactus patch, and left the 
animal to take care of itself. 
“We were sure pleased and some surprised 
to find our camp and the burros just as we had 
left them. Late as it was, we didn’t intend to 
