Sept. 25, 1909.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
489 
Sonora speared a fresh chop from the pan and 
thrust it under his old comrade’s nose. “Well, 
you dog-gone old ’ristocrat,” said he, “smell on 
it, anyhow.” 
Old-Timer was at the last ditch, always obedi¬ 
ent to Sonora’s more forceful will. He did as 
he was told; sniffed not once, but again and 
again with increasing interest, and then sud¬ 
denly he bit out a portion of the chop and 
chewed it, we in our interest watching him with 
, forks and knives suspended. “I take it all back,” 
he said at last; “she’s sure fine eatin’. Just like 
fresh pork for all the world. Let’s fry another 
panful.” 
castoff garments. “Well, they have done pulled 
out, whoever they were,” said Sonora. “I ex¬ 
pect they wer n’t Termain’s outfit; leastways, if 
they were, this couldn’t have been the place of 
his diggin s. Most likely it's away on south of 
here.” 
\Y e unpacked. A well worn trail down into 
the wash led us directly to a small spring that 
broke out from a bed of what had once been 
volcanic ashes, but was now solidified to the con¬ 
sistency of greasy clay. The water was slightly 
alkaline and warm, of course. One never finds 
a cold spring here in the Southwestern desert 
where the temperature of even a hundred-foot 
went and when we went. Sonora declared that 
he would not break camp until he had at least 
pi ospected the mountain for quartz- Said he: 
J hat gold was washed down from some out- 
croppin an I m sure goin’ to have a look for it.” 
So we looked. For three days we scrambled 
around on the mountain side and found no 
Quartz except one narrow streak near the head 
of the placer wash. It carried gold—six to ten 
dollars a ton according to our mortar tests, but 
the vein was merely a ribbon, and the character 
of the formation gave no hope that it would 
widen with depth. It was, in fact, a “pocket 
country exactly like that of the San Bernardino 
desert in California where so many isolated little 
pockets of rich ore have been found. There 
seemed to have been but the one in this little 
range, and old nature herself had opened it and 
scattered its contents down the mountain side. 
Toward the close of the last afternoon of our 
quartz hunt, as we were returning wearily to 
camp, we saw far out on the desert a little caval¬ 
cade coming straight toward us from the noHh- 
west. “Ha! The boys are coming back. They’ve 
been out after more grub,” Sonora exc aimed. 
“That’s right,” said Old-Timer; “I kind of 
had a hunch all the time that we been over¬ 
lookin’ somethin’.” 
But my eyes were better than theirs and I 
said that I thought the party were Indians. That 
was a sure damper to their revived hopes, but 
they would not acknowledge that I was right 
until we came to camp and Sonora looked them 
over with the glasses. “You’re right,” he ad¬ 
mitted; “they are Injuns; three men an’ two 
women.” 
In the course of a half hour they rode up 
close to our camp, pulled their few belongings 
off their burros and turned the animals loose, 
they were Cocopas and very friend y, cheer¬ 
fully answering our greetings with “Bueno dios, 
senors.” 
These people are of Yuman stock, and how 
many there are of them no one knows. They 
live mainly in the deserts of Lower California, 
but often wander up the Colorado as far as 
Yuma and across it into Arizona and Old 
Mexico. They differ as radically from the 
Piman people in physique as they do in lan¬ 
guage. They have no superfluous flesh and are 
tall, pleasant and intelligent of countenance and 
quick in all their movements. Both the Cocopa 
and Yuma men have a very peculiar custom 
which their ancestors must have copied from 
the Moor soldiery that accompanied the Spanish 
conquistadores. They wear a veil that conceals 
all of their features below the eyes. It is gen¬ 
erally a silk handkerchief, drawn tightly across 
the face and knotted at the back of the head. 
It is not laid aside even when the temperature 
runs away up to a hundred and twenty-five 01- 
thirty degrees, and one wonders how the wearer 
of it can breathe. 
The newcomers were traveling light; they 
packed no shelter, no food except a couple of 
recently killed jack rabbits, no cooking utensils 
except one iron pot. They had a number of 
canteens, a few thin blankets and quilts for bed¬ 
ding and two or three hatchets. Two of the 
men had old model repeaters and the other one 
carried a single barrel muzzleloading shotgun. 
Seeing how slender was their commissary, we 
gave them some of our dried meat, some beans, 
bacon and flour and food even more luxurious, 
Eating the unusual meat set me to thinking 
of the first cat meat I ate, and I told my com¬ 
panions something about it. It was in the North 
Woods of New York State, and I killed the 
animal after following its tracks and camping 
in the snow for a week with Jack Sheppard and 
Ed. Arnold, two of the best woodsmen that ever 
lived. I was very much of a boy then, but I 
loved to hunt, and maybe I was not proud when 
I killed a panther and a little later two more. 
How swiftly the years go. My old friends are 
dust and their loved forest is a wilderness no 
nore. Some day, somehow, I really believe the 
white man will even overrun this desert and 
despoil it. 
We devoured two fry pans of the cat meat, 
it our various smokes and prepared to move 
amp. Then we remembered that we had a lot 
4 fresh meat to dry and decided to defer our 
tart until the morrow. 
We are resting on the banks of the Colorado 
D-day, having struck it shortly after sunrise 
nis morning. We are fairly waterlogged; when- 
ver we move it swashes within us as though we 
'ere abandoned derelicts of the sea. Our search 
Dr Termain and his wonderful mine is ended 
rd we are heading-for Yuma. 
I left off the tale of our search for Termain 
here we were drying meat preparatory to 
"eaking camp. The next morning we packed 
) and struck westward across the desert to 
lother low volcanic blowout twelve or fifteen 
iles away. It differed from the range we left 
ily in being shorter; it was not over five miles 
length. If the outfit we were looking for 
as there, we determined to know it at once, 
id so headed for the northern end of- the lizard- 
;e black and brown eruption. Rounding the 
'int we found a faint burro trail—just here and 
ere a few tracks where the drifting sand had 
iled to cover them. “It’s them, all right,” said 
'nora gleefully, and, “yes, I allowed we’d find 
;ns of em hereabout,” Old-Timer chimed in. 
It was not difficult to follow the trail. It ran 
)ng the foot of the little range for a couple 
miles and then turned obliquely up a wide 
mntain slope toward a big wash. “I’ll gamble 
it we find ’em over there,” said Sonora, point- 
' to the dark cut, and then we urged on the 
rros to a faster gait. 
\s we neared the place I remarked that if 
y were camping there we ought to see their 
rros grazing, and at that time of day the 
oke of their camp-fire. Presently we rode 
0 innumerable burro tracks meandering all 
r the slope, and none of them were fresh, 
en we came to the rim of the wash where 
found a deserted camp ground, a gray and 
:k fireplace, a lot of tin cans, two or three 
In the morning we were out early, and fol¬ 
lowing a well-used trail that ran directly up the 
wash from the spring. In ten minutes we came 
to some diggings that were unmistakably Ter¬ 
main s eldorado, for lo, there in the midst of a 
lot of tailings was the boasted gold-saving dry 
W’asher, a thing on four legs that resembled a 
patent clothes washing machine. It had a hand 
wheel. 1 gave it a turn or two. Wire screen 
hoppers hopped, thin-bladed fans fanned, a little 
fine sand settled in a drawer at the bottom. 
It must be that their diggin’s petered out,” 
said Sonora, mournfully eyeing the washer and 
the gravel heaps. 
Old-Timer had a more hopeful opinion of it. 
“I expect their grub gave out and they had to 
hike for more,” said he. 
If that were so they certainly would have 
left their tools here with the washer,” I told 
them. Right over there they had a little hand 
forge and an anvil. 
Yes, it sure looks like another hope busted,” 
said Sonora. “Well, we can know all about it 
by.prospectin’ their diggin’s. But first let’s find 
out which way they traveled from here.” 
We circled the mountain side and soon found 
their trail running out on the desert in a north¬ 
westerly direction. It seemed to be not more 
than three or four days old. My companions 
agreed that a northwesterly course would hit 
the Colorado somewhere between the Gulf and 
Yuma, a matter of two or three days’ travel. 
With pick and shovel and pan we began pros¬ 
pecting the deserted gravel workings, but first 
we packed a good supply of water up from the 
spring for washing purposes. In each place they 
had uncovered we worked a little further ahead 
and got a pan of gravel and scrapings off the 
bed rock, removed the coarser part of it with 
our fingers and washed the residue, about half 
a pan of fine gravel and sand. We got results 
from the start of about a cent to the pan; that 
is, a dollar per yard. When night came we had 
prospected about half of the deserted workings. 
By evening of the next day every hole had been 
tested and the pannings were the same. With 
plenty of water good pay could be taken from 
the wash, but as it is the find is worthless. We 
had saved the pannings and had about fifty cents 
in gold dust. We mixed it with a panful of 
gravel and ran it through the discarded machine. 
Then we panned the small portion of sand that 
fell into the drawer bottom. As near as could 
be determined, the patented thing had passed 
out a third of the gold with the tailings. 
After the evening meal was over and the 
dishes washed we held a council. Old-Timer 
was for starting homeward in the morning. I 
said that it was immaterial to me whither we 
