The Opelousas courier., 1903-04-25

- ~~ years after IL was ell
acted. Yearly, as the white men trav-
erse that trapdoor Of the neither re-
gions, they play their lives against the
tales of yellow lucre that lie under it,
and some lose. The next year, says
the San Francisco Chronicle, their
mummifed corpses are found by 9TH
ers, who may pity them as good
men," they played the limit and lost.
Here's the next that tries.
Fifty-one years ago a party Of men,
women and children-twenty, all told
left Independence, Mo-. in two wagons
drawn by oxen, bound for the gold
fields Of California. From that day I'M
til now they have eve been heard Of,
and their fate has always been a mys-
terry. All these years the bare desert
held the secret securely locked, and
only recently have its restless, crawl
ing sands disclosed the 'key-a huge,
rusted iron hook of an ancient OK
chain.
Don Pickett is a prospector with a
frame Of tempered steel and thews and
muscles as tough as whang leather:
He is not well known in San Fran
cisco, but is a familiar figure from
Carson to the Mexican line. He has
just returned to San Francisco from
a prospecting trip to Tonopah through
the Panamint country and Death Val
ley by way Of Mojave and Keeler.
'~'Po1soNl"
At the foot of a spur on the Pana-
mint Mountains, on It's northeastern
slope, he, with his partner, Len Gorson,
had stopped to rest themselves and
their burros from the exhaustion at
tendant upon their trip across Death
Valley. Where they stopped a spring
Of perfectly clear, cold water dubbed
from the rocks and lost itself in the
sands a few yards further on. They
did not drink of the water; they knew
it; so did their burros, and the animals
hardly shifted at it as they turned to
nibble the scant heritage. 1t was dead
ly poison, and the arsenic contained in
a good draught would kill a drinker.
Years ago some prospector had
scrawled the word Poison on a board
from a packing box and had fastened
it to a stake by the edge of the spring:
1t was while resting in the shade Of
the rocks and the brush that Pickett
saw, a few feet from him, the top of
a rust-eaten hook projecting above the
sand. He took hold of 1t, but it did not
come away easily, and, exerting his
strength, he uncovered an ancient OK
chain forty feet in length. the kind
that is practically out Of use now.
From its rusty condition he and his
partner estimated that 1t must have
lain buried In the sand for at l9ast
fifty years, and knowing the mannef IN
which the desert concealed its secrets,
they took their prospecting picks from
their packs, and began drawing them
through the sand.
The points of the picks turned up
bone after bone and pieces Of wagon
irons. Some Of the bones were of
oxen, and some We're Of human beings,
a few evidently being those of women
and children. They reinterred in a
trench in the sand the human bones
they had uncovered, and then packed
on across the dreary waste that
stretched away before them. They told
the story Of their find to Indians and
old white settlers in the Amargosa
country, and from one and another Of
the old men they gained the follow
ing story:
THE LOST PARTY.
It was in the fall of 1851 that a party
came down Amargosa way with two
WORKOUT OK teams. The party had left
Independence, Mo-, that spring, but
had been delayed by sickness, and had
once lost it's way and had left the trail.
Consequently they did not approach
the Sierra Nevada Mountains until the
nearness Of winter prohibited their
passage. They had turned south from
Humboldt sink and had taken the
Southern route by the way of the old
Salt Lake and the Los Angeles trail.
One OF two Of the women and several
of the children had died on the way,
and one Of the wagons had broken
down, and the oxen were so thin and
worn that all were attached to the best
wagon and the other abandoned, az
were some Of the goods. The remain
ing women, children and outfit were
packed in n wagon, and, with the
men on foot the little cavalcade toiled
on toward FL Dorado. Nothing more
was seen or heard Of them by the
Amargosa settlers, and 1t was pre-
sumed that they had gone through In
safety. It is a long, thirsty way from
water to water between the sink of
the Amargosa and Death Valley If one
does not "know"-and the party from
independence did not. II they had
they would have dug a few feet in the
dry sand Of the bed of the lost Amar-
gosa and found wGter, bitter, it is true, |
but it would have preserved life,
Neither did they know that If with
x or Ratchet they had split the huge
''bull" cactus they would have found
an acrid, Juicy pulp that would have
moistened the parched Threats of their
oxen and themselves. But all this
they did not know, and struggled on
with staring eyes and parched and
cracking tongues through the hot and
sitting alkali dust, straining their eyes
across the dreary. dull gray waste for
a spot Of green that might mark the
presence of water.
They saw that spot at the foot of
a spur in the northwestern slope of the
Panamints and headed for it, goading