8 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
SOUTH WEST STORIES OF SAND STORMS, 
TREASURE CAVES AND HUMAN BONES. 
A Land where Time is Cheap and Game is Plenty, and where 
Rain Drops are worth as much as Opals. 
[By M. J. Brown, Editor / ttle Valley (N. Y.) Hub.] 
A grewsome little incident hap- 
pened this week which illustrates 
that human life in the southwest is 
not the dearest of all things and 
that a bundle of human bones is no 
more or less than just bones. 
Some of the cowboys took me out 
on the Ozona trail to where there 
is a cave which has figured promi- 
nently in the wild history of west 
Texas. Only a few years ago, verbal 
history has it, that this cave was the 
last stand for ‘‘Black Jack’’ and 
his gang of train and stage robbers 
—a resort when he was hard pressed 
by the Rangers—and a cave the 
opening of which one might hunt 
for weeks and never find, and all 
the time be within a few rods of it. 
The opening to the cave is about 
30 inches across, an almost perfect- 
ly round hole going straight down 
about eight feet into sold white rock. 
It is surrounded on every side by a 
circle of dwarfed cedars and directly 
over the opening is a cedar, which 
had in days past been: bent over, held 
down by a weight, and had grown in 
this horizontal position until its 
green foliage entirely covered the 
opening, and no one could ever 
dream that the top of this scrub tree 
guarded a secret that many a Rang- 
er gave his life to find, without re- 
sult. 
Tuesday, with a couple of friends 
we went to the eave, lifted the brush 
covering, and one by one lowered 
each other, by lying on our faces 
and letting each other down by the 
hands. At the bottom the cave wid- 
ens into a little tunnel, perhaps six 
feet across, from which are exits 
through three holes, just big enough 
for a man to crawl through. 
Lighting a candle one of the boys 
crawled through the opening; and 
no sooner had his feet disappeared 
when we heard him eall to those 
behind to catch him by the feet and 
draw him out, as a big rattler was 
coiled on a ledge just above him. 
Before the explorer had been pulled 
half way out, I was already on the 
shoulders of another man, and pok- 
ing my head out of the opening in- 
to the sunshine. The exploring ex- 
pedition was abandoned. Interest 
had gone down below zero. 
But I started to tell you some- 
thing about bones and things. It 
has a connection with the cave. 
Returning from the cave I found 
two young fellows who two weeks 
ago crawled through the openings 
and made a hunt for ‘‘Black Jack’’ 
Ketchem’s buried treasures, but in- 
stead of a kettle of gold they found 
a human skeleton, complete of every 
bone. The boys gave me the story, 
but I had been to Texas before and 
I smiled, when to convince me they 
showed me where they buried the 
bones, after taking them out of the 
cave and to town. 
I had dug for bones in Texas be- 
fore, but I was again easy, but a 
foot under the soft earth we found 
the skeleton, the white bones picked 
clean by the coyoutes and the skull 
with a hole in the top—a souvenir 
which will later be used for a desk 
ornament in New York. As for the 
history, you guess. 
This week I saw what I have never 
before happened to witness in my 
travels—a genuine dust storm, or 
sand storm. The wind came up with 
the sun, blowing hard from the west, 
and every hour it increased until 
afternoon there was a storm which 
was the exact counterpart of a New 
York state winter blizzard, only that 
in place of snow was dust and sand, 
the sweepings of the desert coun- 
tries from the Pacific coast. 
Looking out across the prairies 
the sun is darkened by the great 
dust clouds, and one would think a 
terrible thunder storm was coming 
on. Everywhere the air is grey and 
the wind blowing at sixty miles an 
hour, drives the sharp particles with 
terrific force, and it is almost im- 
possible to face it. There is only one 
thing to do during a sand storm, and 
that is to hunt cover. And there 
are several things to do for days 
afterward, eat dust, wear dust and 
sleep with dust. It drives through 
the loosely-constructed houses and 
settles onto and into everything. 
And this is another of the draw- 
backs I failed to mention. 
The past year has been one that 
has caused the sheep men, the eat- 
tle men and the business men to do 
some worrying in the cow countries, 
because of the lack of rainfall and 
consequent lack of feed. The plains 
have been burned up and the water 
holes dry for many months, and the 
much despised prickly pear cactus 
has been utilized for feed to keep 
alive the starving steers. This cac- 
tus grows in great patches all over 
the prairie, and thousands of shoots 
branch out, big as dinner plates, an 
inch or more thick, juicy and green, 
but protected by needle-like thorns 
an inch and a half long. It is pitiful 
to see the half-starved cattle try to 
eat these plates. They will break 
them off with their hoofs and paw 
them around on the ground to break 
off the thorns and then eat them. 
I have seen the poor cattle with 
these plates nailed to their noses 
with the sharp needles. The ranch- 
men now have an oil torch 
with which they burn off the 
needles, and then feed them. There 
is also a soto plant which grows 
in abundance here, and whose root 
is much like a cabbage head, that 
affords good feed in emergencies, 
but there is too much work to 
‘“‘knock”’ them, and it is strictly a_ 
last resort feed. 
Everybody goes the eredit limit 
in this country, and when «4 hard 
season comes it hurts everybody. 1! 
a man owns a hundred head of eat- 
tle and a thousand head of sheep 
he will mortgage them to the limit — 
and buy more, and then when hard _ 
times pinch and money is close, it 
“‘done gets him.’’ g 
Every cow town in the southwest _ 
has its Mexican annex, the same as_ 
the towns in the old south have 
negro subsidiaries. Apart from the 
main town will be the elistered i 
*dobies of the Mexicans, with tiatch-_ 
ed roofs, looking very curious to the 
Yankee eye. In a way, these im 
dian-looking men are woaders of in- 
genuity and thrift, yet agam the 
most prodigal in their ways of liv-— 
ing. But I will have much to write ? 
of these interesting people later ‘ 
This, a country of canned goods 
and dried fruits, and everywhere 
may be seen the ‘‘empties.’”’ About 
the only food articles that do not 
come in original packages are fri- 
jole beans and sow belly. Vegus 
tables simply will not last here, the 
climate melting them to mummies t 
Two articles of diet which: seem — 
™ 
' 
out of place in this hot climate, but— 
which are indispensible to every 
table, are grease and peper. Every — 
cooked article has to swim for eX- 
istence in lard, and then be covered — 
in Chili pepper, and covered go_ 
thickly that a mouthful of some of — 
the table concoctions will make one 
hiccough to swallow. ‘Why ‘grease 
and pepper should be so popular in 
a country so hot is one of the many 
strange ones that keep ‘a’ visitor 
guessing out. ; aioe 
Wandering back over the range 
the other day I ran across a wooden 
cross, way back from any ‘habita- 
tion, and learned later that’ it was 
