The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1903-03-05

=" years after 1t was en-
acted. Yearly. as the white men trav.
erse that trapdoor of the neither re-
gions, they play their lives against the
tales Of yellow lucrc that lie under 1t.
and some lose. The next year, says
the San Francisco Chronicle, their
mummified 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 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 un-
til now they have never been heard of,
and their fate has always been 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 q prospector with q
frame of tempered steel and thews and
muscles as tough as whang leather.
He is not well known in San Fran
cisco. but is familiar figure from
Carson to the Mexican line. He has
just returned to San francisco from
prospecting trip to Tonopah through
the Panamint country and Death VAL
ley by way of Mojave and Kccler.
''PoIsoNp'
Az fbo foot Of n cn,r .~o 49, Do-o
mint Mountains, on its 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 spring
of perfectly clear, cold water bubbled
from the rocks and lost itself in the
sands a few yards further on. They
did not drink of the water; they knew
1t; so did their burros, and the animals
hardly shifted at 1t as they turned to
nibble the scant herbage. 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 packing Dox and had fastened
1t to stake by the edge of the spring.
1t was while resting in the shade of
the rocks and the brush that Pickett
saw, few feet from him, the top OF
a rust-eaten hook projecting above the
sand. He took hold of it, but 1t did not
come away easily. and, exertng 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 it must have
lain buried in the sand for at least
fifty years, and knowing the manner 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,
few evidently being those of women
and children. They reinterred In
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.
1t was in the fall of 1851 that party
came down Amargosa way with two
worn out oZ teams. The party had left
independence, Mo-, that spring. but
had been delayed by sickness, and had
once lost its 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 or 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 We're so thin and |
worn that all We're attached to the best |
wagon and the other abandoned, as
were some OF the goods. The remain
ng women, children and outfit We're
acked in one wagon. and. with the |
nen on foot the little cavalcade tolled |
III toward El Dorado. Nothing more
was seen or heard of them by the
Amargosa settlers, and it was pre-
sumed that they had gone through in
safety. 1t is long, thirsty way from
water to water between the sink OF
the Amargosa and Death Valley If one
does not "know"-and tlie party from
Independence did not. II they had
they would have dug few feet in the
dry sand of the bed of the lost Amar-
gosa and found water, bitter. it is true,
but 1t would have preserved life.
Neither did they know that IL with
axe or hatchet they had split the huge
"bull" cactus they would have found
an acrid. juicy pulp that would have
molstened the parched throats 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 alkall dust. strainlng their eyes
across the Gresry. dull gray waste for
spot OF green 'hr might mark the
presence of water.
They saw that spot at the foot of
q spur In the northwestern slope of the
Panamints and headed FOR It, goading
On their dra i,InH cxap uhav |