Lost Mine of the Stars

The Lost Mine of the

By RAY HOWLAND IT WAS hot. The yellow bluffs along the trail reflected the awful glare of the Arizona noon-day sun until we were glad to pull our Stetsons down over our eyes and keep mushing on. We were beyond the perspiration point; we were frying, eyeballs burning; our tongues felt like smoked hams in our mouths. Two more miles to Los Alamos, that little bit ofheaven thrown down there on the outskirts of hell, as if by accident by the Maker.

Spanish inscriptions on the walls of the cave are evidence that Peralta and his men once lived there while they dug fabulous riches from the hills.

"Look!" cried my trail mate. She was pointing a sunburned hand to a smoke-brush where a magnificent paint pony, with rawhide hackamore trailing, hips sagging, was nosing a huddled heap of copper-colored humanity that had apparently fallen off the faithful pinto's back and dragged himself beneath the scant shade.

With a startled little cry, my wife bounded across the few separating rods of burning canyon bottom to give aid to the poor, ragged redskin.

She pillowed the young brave's head in the crook of her arm while I poured a few drops of "snake bite" down the boy's gullet.

Finally he opened his eyes in wonderment. A frightened glance that gave place to a look of peace and gratitude as he lifted a groping brown hand to touch my wife's face, to see if she were real or a child of the Gods.

After a few days of careful nursing at Los Alamos Springs, where we'd packed him on his pinto, he vouchsafed the information that he had been hunt-ing in the hills, drank of the poison waters of Yellow Medicine tanks, be-came deathly sick and had tried to make his way to the open desert where he

FEBRUARY, 1935 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS 9 Stars An Adventuresome Arizona Prospector Plays Good Samaritan and Reaps Reward in Gold

had hoped to be picked up by some wandering puncher. One morning, just as the first golden bars of the rising sun streaked through the pinnacled heights above our camp, I rolled out of my blankets to see that Comet's Tail was gone from where he'd bedded down on a bit of canvas close to the campfire.

Resuming our journey, my partner and I, legging-clad against the bite of sidewinders, plodded behind our faithful "canaries" across the desert. A little fire was burning at the mouth of a great rugged canyon. Our lead burro brayed a mournful, sobbing bawl. From beyond and a little above the flickering fire, the yapping bark of a coyote sounded and echoed from ridge to barranca. That would be Comet's Tail-A Pima challenge. I threw back my cabeza and did my best: "Aooh-oooo-oo-ah-aa-aa!", the mournful wail of the lobo.

Soon we were at the fire. We entered the circle of light with our right hands raised, palm out in the friendly salute of the Southwest Indians. A gray-haired old Indian advanced beside his young companion, offered me his hand, muttering: "Smoiga-smoiga!" then struck himself sharply on the chest with a clenched fist. He banged me a resounding whack on my wishbonefine, we were friends and doubly welcome. It was Comet's Tail and his old dad, Chief Six, now James Suviate of Los Angeles.

The old chief fished in his pocket and dragged out a string of fine nuggets which he placed around my wife's neck, then stepped back and grinned appreciatively.

Taking me by the arm he turned me around and motioned over the mountains, west of the Dog Tooth and spoke the few words: "Oro del padres, mucho, buscar usted! -"Much gold of the Padres, you search." His message delivered he grunted, shook hands again, and then, Indian fashion, abruptly left us, Comet's Tail with him. Their debt was paid.

We camped in a great cave that gave every evidence of having been inhabited centuries ago, not by aborigines, but be civilized man. The cave, as near as I could calculate, should be close to where old Chief Six had indicated that I should look for a mislaid mine, that supposedly had been worked by Franciscan Friars, before the Jesuits took over the affairs of that ousted brotherhood in what was then part of old Mexico, now Arizona. It was the 13th day of our search when I chose to leave my wife at camp. About four o'clock that afternoon a loose boulder at the rim of a rock lipped canyon gave way with me. I shot down the canyon-side like a cub bear rolling away from an enemy. My canteen smashed on a rock and began to leak. The sun was still high enough to burn down with all its August in tensity when I was still a couple of miles from wife and cave. I was thirsty. Soon I could not bear the touch of a little smooth pebble that I tried to hold in my cheek thinking that it would start a saliva flow. I crawled beneath an ironwood, exhausted. I could not last long in that condition.

At sundown I revived enough to discover that I had been resting my addled head against the thorny bole of a visnaga cactus, that juicy lifesaver of the desert. With trembling hand I tore at the spiney, fourfoot fluted column. I wadded great hunks of the gooey, brackish plup into my bleeding mouth and sucked for life.

I struggled to my uncertain legs and staggered across the darkening desert to a point where I could see the flames, shooting high, from a signal fire that my wife had kindled. I heard a shot, then another, and another, evenly spaced. That was a signal. I told my partner through cracked lips that I was through. "Well", she said, with a twinkle in her eyes that I hadn't noticed before, "you may quit if you wish, but not I."

She went to our duffle pile and brought forth and held out to me a little copper cylinder from which she had pried the cemented cap from one end. She'd found it under a flat rock at the back of the cave.

It contained a badly dry-rotted roll of parchment. From the dim, traced figures I could recognize only one thing for sure, that was the crude picture of a great boulder or pinnacle on the face of which was carved the maltese cross of the Order of Saint Francis. The Spanish script told me nothing except that close to this rock I would find the trail that should lead me to "El Mino de Estrella".

I had seen that mark in my rambles the day before. The next morning as I scouted the foot of the mountain I found it again. Nearby, at the partly concealed mouth of a steep canyon I found a trail which led me on up and up until I came to a flat, wide place in the canyon-bed where the piled-up boulders spoke of an ancient placer workings.