The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-08-25
TRAMPS OF DEATH VALLEY.
THEIR SEARCH FOR FOOD,
 DRINK AND SHELTER.

Strange Life of These Chronic Hoboes
 Prey Upon Ranchmen-Revenge of
 One Who Was Ordered to Leave
 Crimes They Commit--The Tramp
 PrOspectOr.
 What would you who feed an occa- sional hobo from your back doorstep and wonder at his feet worn from tramping over a few miles of we'll laid roads, hs clothes grass strewn from sleeping in haymows, think of tramp who covers hundreds of miles year, whose feeding places are from twenty five to fifty miles apart, whose water ing places are equally distant from each other-in short, whose bed and beat, so to speak, are the vast floor of tho desertg
 Yet there Is exactly such a class, real tramps, yet as different from the tramps of cities as day is from night, tramps with nothing to do but eat They do not have to beg; food comes to them through fear. They do not have to search out sheltering barns at nightfall; a greasewood bush is their shelter, the sands of the desert their couch.
 In spite of it's arid waters. in spite of the dtscomforts and the positive dan gers to which even well equipped trav- elens on the desert are subjected, says the San Francisco Chronicle, the great sandy plain is come to have a species of tramp all it's own, not an outgrowth from civilized places, but an orlgina- ton of ts own, an interesting as well as novel branch of a worthless tribe.
 Even Death Valley the most barren and dangerous of all deserts known to civilized man, has it's hoboes who wan der up and down it's lisnal length through all seasons of the year save the very hottest part of the summer.
 The headquarters of all desert tramps are in some small town on the borders of the region over which they wander. Daggett has more than its share of them. So has Randsburg, Johannesburg, Ivanpah and all the rest of the scattered settlements that dot the level plain. They are not nu- merous, these foot travellers, yet In proportion to the population they are probably as plentiful as their brethren of the coast are around San Francisco and Los Angeles
 Their methods of operation are vast ly different from those of the coast hoboes. Leaving Daggett, Ivanpah or 1xtha thnIy a os1y, bered during the months of greatest heat, some time in late September or October they strike out alone across the desert. One peculiarity of this class of tramps is that they never move about in companies Indeed one desert hobo is equally the sworn enc my of all the rest of his kind. For clothing they have such things as they can beg possibly a few earn a little money during their months of idle ness" in the town and spend that for clothing, but as 8 rule they are garbed in more different colors. than was Jo- seph, though of more subdued hue.
 Oyer his back the desert tramp slings a gunnysack, in which are couple of empty tin cans, beer bottle or two of water and such food as he can beg or steal. Thus equipped, usually without weapon of any sort, he invades a country which has brought more men to death than any other equal area in the world outside the great battlefelds
 Usually his first stop will be some twenty-five miles out at desert ranch or solitary mining camp. On the way he travels as slowly as his food supply will let him. The cactus fruit is ripening about the time of year in which he reaches the cactus fields, and this helps him a bit on his way, and there are huge chuckawallahs Qizards of two feet in length or more with edi- ble tails) to be had for the killing, and