In Arizona 
IV.—A Desert Nomad—A Costly Journey—A 
Fight With Apaches and a Rescue 
By J. W. SCHULTZ 
Author of “My Life as an Indian,” “Life Among the Blackfeet,” “Floating Down the Missouri,” etc. 
W HAT are one’s own experiences in the 
still unfenced places of to-day com¬ 
pared to the adventures of those who 
traversed them in times gone by? Nothing. I 
might write about my tramps hereabouts, and 
what I see and do, but how trivial they would 
read alongside of the stories of the old-timers 
who have passed their lives here in the desert. 
I prefer to record the latter. 
My camp is located on an old, old road con¬ 
necting the old Silver King mine, some fifteen 
or twenty miles to the northwest, and Tucson, 
a hundred miles to the southeast across the 
desert. Millions were taken from the famous 
mine, and then the vein was lost and the road 
became a faint mesquite, greasewood, and cac¬ 
tus-grown trail, used only by a few wandering 
prospectors. Now and then one of these old 
fellows halts at my spring for the night, and 
before he has time to get out his frying-pan 
and coflfee-pot I hasten to ask him to eat with 
me; and invariably the tired wayfarer is only 
too glad to do so. The fried potatoes and 
stewed fruit and canned corn or tomatoes, I set 
before him are a feast, a welcome change from 
his daily diet of Spanish cooked beans and bad 
bread. 
Such a meal, and perchance a drink, and suc¬ 
ceeding pipefuls of good tobacco never fail to 
unseal the lips of the most taciturn of these 
desert nomads, and a few well-calculated and 
diplomatic remarks are sufficient to turn their 
thoughts back to other days. In this way I get 
many a stirring tale of the long ago. 
One of these wayfarers came along about 
four o’clock one afternoon, riding a jack burro 
about three feet high that kept up an incessant 
bawling, and, with the aid of a surly collie dog, 
herding along six or eight others, two of which 
were packed. He afterward informed me that 
the jack was blue blooded, and had a pedigree 
running back to the time of the battle of the 
Alamo. 
He was a very thin, tall, stoop-shouldered, 
long-nosed, white-haired man, was this pros¬ 
pector of seventy-three years, and judging by 
his slender and time-worn outfit, very poor. 
He told me that his name was Henry Miller; 
that he was born in Bennington, Vt., and had 
been prospecting in the deserts of New Mexico, 
Old Mexico and Arizona for the past forty-two 
years. 
“And in all that time did you never make a 
strike?” I asked. 
“Nothin’ to speak of but once; I had a 
partner named Sharpe, and we made a strike 
up between Wickenburg and Prescott. At any 
rate, it was a good top showin’. At the same 
time a stampede set in for a new discovery over 
in the Casa Grande country. I gave my partner 
a paper, authorizin’ him to make any kind of a 
■deal with the claims, sell ’em, or bond ’em. 
or whatever, and joined the rush. I was gone 
about three months, but found nothin’, writin’ 
to Sharpe meantime a number of letters, but 
never gettin’ an answer from him. Then I 
heard that he had sold our property for ten 
thousand dollars, and I pulled out for Wicken¬ 
burg. When I got there I had no trouble in 
findin’ my partner. He was sittin’ out on the 
porch of the Poodle Dog saloon, smokin’ a 
cigar and about two-thirds drunk. When he 
saw me he got up and threw his arms around 
me and said, ‘Partner, you have arrived just 
three weeks too late. I sold out for ten thou¬ 
sand, but the wheel and faro has plumb swal¬ 
lowed it. However, here’s a cigar, take it.’ 
Then he fished around in his pockets and pro¬ 
duced a four-bit piece. ‘Yes, and here’s the 
price of two drinks,’ he went on. ‘Come in and 
we’ll have ’em; we’ll drink to makin’ another 
strike, and when we do, it’ll be your turn to 
make the sale.’ 
“Yes, sir, that’s the only strike I ever made, 
ajid all I ever got out of it was a cigar and a 
drink.” 
“But you still have hope?” 
“Sure. Of course I can’t do no hard work, and 
I’ve got heart disease and may drop off any 
minute, but while I can, I keep goin’. I’m 
headin’ now for the Silver King district. I was 
in there some years ago, and found some likely 
lookin’ float in a wash that I didn’t trace to 
its source. I’m goin’ to try it again.” 
Thus it is with these old-time prospectors; 
however old and worn and crippled they may 
be, one never finds them in a county hospital. 
“In your time. I presume you have had some 
exciting adventures with the Indians of this 
country,” I remarked. 
“I have that,” he replied. “There was a time 
when us prospectors just had to quit nosing 
around in these Arizona mountains for fear of 
the Apaches. While their stronghold was in 
the White Mountains, bands of ’em were out 
everywhere, to the east, west and south of that 
range, as far west as the Colorado and south 
into Old Mexico. They got this same partner 
of mine, Sharpe, and I had the narrowest kina 
of an escape. 
“You see, when I struck Wickenburg after 
my trip south of Casa Grande, I had only 
thirty dollars, and I spent most of that soberin’ 
up my partner, after his ten-thousand-dollar 
spree. I had a tryin’ time doctorin’ and nursin’ 
him back to himself. But he was worth it, you 
bet; when sober, one of the bravest, cheerfulest, 
best rustlers that ever packed a burro. Well, 
there we was, broke. Somethin’ had to be 
done. I went to a storekeeper; never had 
talked to him before, either, and I said we 
wanted some grub, either jaw-bone or grub 
stake. 
“ ‘It’ll be grub stake,’ said he, ‘make out your 
list.’ 
“We packed our burros and pulled out, head¬ 
in’ southwest into the mountains as the least 
likely part of the country to be infested by the 
Apaches, and we got mixed up in the roughest 
country there is in all Arizona; ridges of granite 
boulders bigger than houses, cut canons in the 
lava impassable for miles and miles, but water 
a-plenty, and, of course, fire-wood. And talk 
about rattlers, that’s where you do find ’em; 
swarms of ’em along every water course, in 
among the boulders, and a-crawlin’ everywhere 
at night because in the daytime in summer the 
rocks and sand are so hot that they’d fry crisp 
if they should crawl out of the sage. There 
was lots of game, deer and mountain sheep, 
and we lived high on it, savin’ our store grub 
as much as possible. We’d made up our minds 
to find somethin’ worth while if a long trip and 
hard work would do it. Not a creek nor a wash 
we came to but what we panned the bars of it 
for placer, and we tried to find the source of 
all the float we came across. There was no 
trace of gold in the gravel, and all the float 
seemed to come from stringers, none more than 
two or three inches wide. Plumb disgusted, 
after a month or so we changed our course and 
traveled southeast, and then east, at last strik¬ 
in’ the Agua Fria somethin’ like fifteen or 
twenty miles above its junction with the Gila. 
We camped alongside of it a couple of days, 
bathin’ a-plenty an’ washin’ our clothes, and 
then worked back into the range that borders it 
on the west. 
“There was no water in them mountains at 
that time of year; tanks dried up, even the blind 
ones, and no springs either, so every three days 
one or t’other of us took the burros over to 
