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

with these he can live for some time on small actual ration.
 Where night overtakes him he sleeps and by dear experience he knows which water holes he can depend on yet to contain the life giving tluld. Should one of these tanks fall him In time of exceptional drought he must push on to the next one or retreat to tho settlement whence he came. If either of these is too far for him to reach he dies, as many of his kind have died in the years that are gone, uncared for by man or beast, for not even the dogs of the desert will accom- pany these tramps on their journeys. Teamsters and prospectors do not stop to bury the tramp when his body Is found, which is not often; the sun and the starns of the boundless space take care of him when he dies, as, indeed, they did in life.
 But if the water hole toward which he tramps does contain plenty of water he will sometimes camp near it for several days. To these springs, too, COI1b OGGoSlOllcll pl <SpGClOESt dlOl6 save for their faithful burros. When one of these whose "grubsiake" was extra large disappears, his taking off is usually charged to the Flutes. More often, so am told by old desert men, some tramp has felled him with a stone, and then after robbing his sad dlebags Or the pack on his burro, ot, f4ofn bn bao,,A oF ho It is days before the dead miner is discovered, sometimes the days run into weeks, and then all trace of the murderer has been covered up and he is somewhere far out on the winding white trail, living on the food he com mitted an awful crime to get.
 The circuit of the desert tramps who start out from De,ggett frequently runs entirely around Death Valley. From Daggett they go out to the China Ranch or to Resting Springs, thence on across low lava hills into the Furnace Creek country and down to the old bo- rax works at the north end of the val- ley. From there it is a short and com- paratively safe hike of a couple cf hundred miles into some one of the mining camps, so that their tramp, all told, reaches very close to three and sometimes four hundred miles.
 On this journey water holes are far apart and very uncertain, ranches are scattered and the network of trails so interwoven by the feet of prospectors and of burros that they become veri- table maze to the man who does not keep close watch on them year by year. To make this circuit requires at [ least nine months of the year-from late September or October to the last of May. For the remainder of the year. as has been said, the tramp loafs around some border town, where he has to behave himself; ropes and telegraph poles and willing men are too near at hand for the committing of crimes
 It is the lonely ranches on the desert that suffer most from this class of wanderers. Coming to the ranch house, they insolently demand food and clothing, and they get 1t, too. If they do not the haystack Is burned that night, or even the house is set on fire. If the family depends on spring of water. as likely as not the water hole will be filled with stones and earth; frequently springs along the trail are so treated when the tramp thinks that one of his enemies is likely to pass that way in the near future and depend on the presence of water in the tank for himself and his stock,
 One incident of this kind may be | told to illustrate the devllish schemes these fellows concoct. A new manager was sent to the borax plant on the northern rim of Death Valley. He was a most excellent man for the work in hand, but he knew nothing of the peo-
 pie with whom he was to deal, and the
 first tramp who came along was
 roughly ordered to "get out and stay
 out" Now the road over which the
 borax from this particular plant was
 hauled to the refinery was long and
 dry, and the company had placed
 wooden tanks at necessary intervals
 keeping them filled with water and de,
 pending on them for the use of thu