The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-08-25

wagon teams and their drivers, The tramp, angered and revengetul at his treatment, set out along this road and for one hundred miles emptied every tank. The result can better be mag ined than described; the next wagon i train out, two huge desert wagons, drawn by twenty mules and handled by two men, coming to the first tank and finding no water pushed on to the next; bv the time they reached that the men were well nigh crazed with thirst but no water awaited them there, and on they dragged their weary bodies, until 1t is presumed, abandon ing the team, they wandered away and died.
 Tn wagon and the mules, the alter quite dead. were found two weeks later bpt not evei the skeletons of the men were ever seen. The desert keeps it's secrets better than the sea, and this was one of them. Men followed the tramp, some say he was caught. The men who followed him still live on the desert; I have seen one Of them, but mona can remember whether they caught this particular tramp or not. Possibly a pile of bones could tell If it , could speak, for short shrift is meted to the man. be he tramp or mine own CT. who meddles with water on the des- ert. More valuable than gold 1t is, and worth many human lives when thrown | in the balance.
 On the desert, too, there is another kind of tramp, by no means criminal, and vet one of the most interesting characters of the whole west-the tramp prospector. He makes the ea- siest living of any man in the world, not excepting the promoter of wildcat
 mines. And, like the promoter, he 1 lives by feecing the credulous. The I tramp prospector Is forever discover ling a fabulously rich prospect. Back from the heart of the desert he comes, laden with samples, supposedly from his new discovery, but really picked up on the dump of some established mine, Armed with these it is little trouble for him to enlist the help of some man with more money than knowledge of the desert to develop the mine" 1 His first demand Is, of course, a "grub-stake." This will consist of a burro. or two, if the man can be talked out of them, a sack of beans, becon -four, molasses and cooking utensils, as well as other small things needful in the work he says he is going to under take. Thus provided, the prospectol sets out, camps at some well hidden water hole and there spends his time until the grubstake gives out. Then providing himself with still better samples of ore, he returns, reports to his angel" that there is yet more work to be done ere the best ore can be reached, and, if possible, talk him out of fresh supply of food. If the packer has not been warned he usually puts up the twenty-five dollars or thereabouts necessary to outfit the iprospector- visions of coming wealth held before his eager eyes the while by the miner, and out the wanderer goes again. There are cases on record where one man has thus been finn nammed three times, but twice Is usu- ally the limit.
 Then, somewhere in the interior be- tween two days, the tramp prospectol disappears, and that particular camI sees no more of him until memories ot his dealings with this particular mar have disappeared. While the affair k wearing off he Is operating at some other camp, and so the story goes
 f, some of his wanderings, the traml prospector does strike a good mine ant
 can live honestly, or until he meet
 some one who takes reparation out o him with gun.