Legends of the Lost

egends of the Lost Don't Bet Your Life on the Lost Lode of My Apache Girl

Looking back, he was the luckiest man alive, though he didn't think so then. He had found gold and lost it, but he had lived to remember.

The map lay blank in 1851. It was a time before settlement. A time before Arizona. A time when the land was labeled Mexico, but really time, land, and all in it belonged to the Apaches.

The desperate white man was not now after gold; he was after water.

It was July, and he had come east from Tucson. He crossed the San Pedro River, and he had watered his horse and refilled his canteen at Dragoon Springs.

He thought, "If ever we lose the word hot, we can just replace it with J-u-l-y." Farther on he had gulped castor-tasting water at Croton Springs before coaxing his horse across the dusty playa. He sighted a line to the right of a two-headed peak already known as Dos Cabezas.

Beyond those alkali flats, his horse died. He pulled his possibles into a bindle bag and, now afoot, put the setting sun behind him. He had heard of springs in the hills ahead, but he knew of none between his fallen horse and Fronteras far to the south. To the east he would find Mesilla, New Mexico, a settlement on the grand Rio Bravo. Three years back he had traveled south of here when he and thousands of other gold seekers rushed to Sutter's Mill in California. Their columns raised dust from Janos to Fronteras to Tucson and then westward on the Gila Trail. Gold or Bust!

He knew this was Apache country, but they hadn't much bothered prospectors recently. Too, he hoped they wouldn't concern themselves with a solitary traveler so obviously poor he didn't even have a horse. Maybe they'd think him crazy. And he might go mad anyway if he didn't find water soon.

He never voiced the why of this return trip. Some surmise he was fleeing an untold fall from grace in the Mexican village of Tucson. Others offer the story that he was headed homeward from San Francisco after making his poke in the Sierra Nevada.

He pressed on through the grasslands toward the twoheaded peak. A day and another night passed. He napped when he could, but he kept moving. Sunrise found him following natural lays of the land along game trails, past yuccas, mesquites, and even a few oaks. Walk and rest in any shade. Walk and rest.

Through squinted eyes he stared up every draw and canyon, hoping to spot the green of trees rooted in running water. His imagination flashed to placers and pans, to nuggets in doeskin pouches, and rich claims. Yes, he had known gold, but now he knew only thirst. Dusty, weary, parched, he slogged past the two-headed peak. He fought thirst. He fought surrender. His pistol grew too heavy and too hot to carry, so he hung it in a tree. Lost, he saw no obvious pass through the mountains ahead and feared he was hobbling into oblivion.

When the land started to rise, he crossed a trail with fresh tracks of deer and older ones of unshod ponies. Dare he follow it? He had no choice. Slowly, with unintended stealth, he lurched forward. Then, for the first time since leaving Tucson, he saw a human print: marks of small moccasins pressed into the dust. He paused fearfully, took a deep breath, and cast his fate to whatever lurked in the thicket of oaks ahead.

A cluster of doves startled ahead of him. He smelled water. And in a shallow spring pool, he fell to his knees. He drank and splashed and laughed and drank more. Only then did he notice eyes peering intently at him from the shadows. He froze in fear, like a rabbit seeing a hawk's shadow. He knew he'd been seen, but he felt no arrows. The hunkered form didn't move.

He had no idea what the person would do or what he should do. Again thirst prevailed, and he drank. Perhaps that was best. From behind a chittamwood stepped a girl, an Apache maiden. She could see he was no threat, so she walked toward him. Her acorn-colored eyes glared haughtily at him from beneath her raven bangs. She must be one of Cochise's band of central Chiricahua Apaches, the Chokonen. Finally her eyes softened to a thin smile, and she offered him a few cactus fruits and nuts. With water in his belly, he now remembered it was a long time ago he had eaten.

She seemed to be alone, luckily for him. The warriors, 200 to 300 in number, were camped far to the south near Fronteras. Had he walked that way, he would have stumbled right into their camps. That summer Americans didn't interest the Apaches. They were fighting Mexican forces under the command of Col. Jose Maria Carrasco. The Apaches had long seen settlements like Fronteras and Tucson and Janos as sort of marauders' shopping malls where they raided for horses andfood, but this time they were avenging deaths of friends killed in recent Mexican campaigns against the tribe.

Whether from curiosity, compassion, or whim, she motioned for him to follow. He had no canteen left to fill, so he drank again, and they left. For two days he walked behind her, slept across from her at their small night fire, ate the wild chokecherries she picked. They drank at other springs as they continued, sometimes on a trail, many times only near a trail. Sometimes they talked Apache and English, but tone counted for everything since not one word was common to their ears. He never did learn her name and called her "My Apache Girl." On the third day the mountains opened and a broad plain stretched ahead. She paused and pointed eastward. In gratitude he fumbled through his nearly empty pockets for some pretty to give his Apache Girl. Finallyhe pulled out a comb and handed it to her with a chivalrous bow. She smiled before reaching into her pouch and pulling out the largest rock from among a handful. It was gold, as big as a walnut! She could read his eyes and pointed back the way they'd come. She signed that it was three or four days back to a spring. There the gold was nearby and could be picked up like nuts fallen from a generous tree. He tried to ask if it were a spring at which they had drunk? Was it the spring where they had met? Was it near a spring he had passed before meeting her? She shaped a two-headed peak with her hands. She smiled and turned. He dreamed of the waiting lode every step to Mesilla. Once there he recovered, found work, and in time became prosperous and had a family. He followed the events. He read of the Gadsden Purchase. He heard of the border surveys. He read of new stage stationsalong ancient trails. One station rose south of the two-headed peak at Ewell Springs. He read of the Bascom treachery when some of Cochise's family were executed by the cavalry; he prayed that his Apache Girl had not been among them. He imagined her wed and happy. He met other miners, other surveyors. He knew the founding of Fort Bowie in 1862 made the territory safer, but he resisted the urge to go. He read about gold strikes near the two-headed peak. One outfit was headed by a man who found a vein so rich he built a mill and even sold stock. That man, John Finkle Stone, headed the Apache Pass Mining Company with claims on the south side of Dos Cabezas. He lamented treasure lost but hugged life found. He yearned to return to find his Apache Girl and locate the source of her gold, but never did. Sometimes memories held are fonder than reality lost. Had the story ended there there, he'd have been just a lucky man who fell one notch short of gold's fortune. But one autumn day in 1869, news reached Mesilla that Stone had been killed by Apaches. Through some infraction, he was declared an enemy by the Indians and slain in an attack near Dragoon Springs on the other side of the windswept playa. Stone died in a night ambush along with four soldiers and a stagecoach driver. He died a rich man, his canteen full, riding a stagecoach on a mapped road, with a military escort guiding them. Cochise himself led that raid. A bar of gold was later retrieved from an Apache camp. In Mesilla, he put down the paper and smiled. True, he wasn't the richest man alive, but he was the luckiest... and smart enough to know it. To this day, prospectors continue to file claims near Dos Cabezas and dream of My Apache Girl Lost Lode.