Under Desert Sand

by R Lawson Gamble

  After dinner, the friends climbed in the Jeep and drove back to the motel to pack and get some sleep for an early morning start. Eagle Feather took Blue out to the parking lot for a last stroll. Zack joined him.

  "What now, White Man?"

  Zack watched Blue leave a long message, lifted his gaze to the rift in the hills where the mighty Colorado flowed through, admired the barren summits backlit by the sun. He turned to Eagle Feather. "I'm going to quit."

  Eagle Feather stared, taken aback. "Quit what?"

  "The FBI."

  "For Libby and Bernie?"

  "Yes. I miss Libby every day, and I don't want to miss the entirety of Bernie's childhood."

  "I can not fault you there." Eagle Feather put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Have you told Susan yet?"

  "No, not yet. I'll still help Susan from time to time on the lecture circuit. A few days away now and again won't hurt; in fact, it will probably help. It's time to slow my pace, though, minimize my risk. When we were digging our graves at the business end of Tav's rifle, it began to look like the end of the road. My regret was even greater than my fear. I don't want to feel that again."

  "When will you break the news to Libby?"

  Zack smiled, dug in his pocket for his phone, turned his back and walked away. "Right now."

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  By the fifth day, the last FBI agent, Forensics expert, Sheriff's Deputy, BMI Special Investigator, Park Ranger, Tribal liaison, hanger-on and spectator was gone, the yellow tape was down, the stillness of the desert reborn. The wind lost no time erasing footprints and shifting sand over refilled pits and graves. The windmill sagged a bit more, the splintered and trampled blackbrush on the slope rebounded, and the big lock on the gate remained securely engaged.

  In the following years, time resumed its relentless, glacial transformation. The leases for sheep pasture and cattle grazing expired, and abandoned houses and barns crumbled and decayed, fences sagged and fell, roads grew over with weeds. With mineral resources exhausted, and the mines reclaimed by the Preserve, inhabitants could no longer make even a scratch existence and moved away, replaced by daytime tourists whisking past on the main roads from one historic sign to the next.

  The tourist stops did not include Hidden Springs. The nearby Mojave Road fell out of use, barred to four-wheel drive enthusiasts to protect the fragile land. Its only access removed, Hidden Springs returned to the lonely, barren and unremarkable place it had once been.

  To the Chemehuevi Indians, this location was and would always be a sacred place. Yet none visited, or even approached, for the pervasive sense of evil that blanketed the place remained and turned the adventurous away, as if all the dead from over the millennium stood as one in a protective ghostly barricade.

  Yet reports continued, sightings from nearby hills or passing planes, strange flickering lights glimpsed in the darkness, large upright creatures black against the blackness, sounds of striking pickaxes and scraping shovels, even shouts of anger and pain in long forgotten languages.

  Dreams of hidden treasure died with the dreamers that final night when the cursed spring claimed its own. After that, Jim Hatchett removed the map from his safe and burned it. On the lonely hillside, the etched slab cracked from freezing and thawing, and lichens fed and flourished within the fissures, until no sign of human work remained. No one was left to know of maps or treasure, or to care to brave the unnatural guardian protecting it.

  Was there ever a treasure to be found? Or did rumor feed upon tall tales and idle speculation, as is so often the case?

  Then what is it glints and glimmers in the deep burrow of the desert tortoise under the deserted windmill when a ray of evening sun enters at just the right angle?

  THE REAL STORY

  I thought the reader might be interested to learn how my fiction grew from an actual gunfight, possibly the last of the Old West, between two outlaw gunfighters in 1925. I came across the story while exploring the Mojave Preserve region of the Mojave Desert in California. The story can be found in the October 22, 1956 issue of the San Bernardino Country Sun on page 23, the article entitled Duel To The Death Drops Curtain On Farm Area, and closer to the actual event, in The Billings Gazette, Tuesday November 9, 1925, page 1, an article entitled Gun Men Duel Till Dead In Desert Shack. Here are the facts.

  Few would suspect while visiting the bleak Lanfair Valley today it once was a populous farm and grazing area. At the time, the big player in the valley was the Rock Springs Land & Cattle Company. This outfit claimed a range extending thirty miles. Small farmers with herds of a few head disputed the outfit's claim to the grazing, while at the same time helped themselves to a calf or two.

  The Hidden Springs in my novel is in actuality Government Holes, the plural a misnomer, for in its 100-year history there appears never to have been more than one well. At the apex of the Southern Piute Indians' inhabitation of the area, the well was one of many springs dotted across the desert which sustained an ancient road, later named the Mojave Road, a southern desert North American Silk Road of sorts, along which trade extended among tribes all the way from the Colorado River to the Pacific Ocean.

  Government Holes was a key watering hole for the Rock Springs Land & Cattle Company, and it was here the gunfighters took their stand.

  The first gunman to come to the region was Bob Holliman, who had roamed the Outlaw Trail, and who gave the name Hole-In-The-Wall to the rock formation in the southern preserve area because of a resemblance to the original hideout of that name where outlaws took refuge in Wyoming.

  My Jake Skowler was modeled after Matt Burts, whose history is given fairly accurately under Jake's name in an early chapter of this volume. He did hire on as foreman of the cattle company, largely to enforce its claims against the likes of Holliman, thought to be helping himself to beef. The active outlaw life I described for Jake Skowler in Arizona is very close to that of Burts before he moved on to Lanfair Valley. Even before Burts' arrival, there was "sniping and general gunplay" directed at the foremen of the cattle company, a position that became available with some regularity. The Rock Springs outfit brought in Burts largely to "get" Holliman, the most dangerous of their antagonists, but after a horse was shot out from under him in ambush, and his hat shot off, Burts also decided to retire from the foreman job and built a small ranch in the area, in effect joining the other team. The cattle company filled the vacancy yet again, this time with a known gunman named Bill Robinson. As described in my novel, Robinson took up quarters in a shack next to Government Holes and took control of the use of the water.

  The talk in the valley was Robinson had been hired to kill Burts and Holliman. While rumors and gossip grew around this controversy, to everyone's surprise nothing happened for more than a year. Meanwhile, Holliman had gone off prospecting. His partner was Bert Smith (my fictional Skaggs), a war veteran who had moved to the desert to clear his lungs of poison gas. The legend of lost gold on Table Top Mountain is told much as I describe in the novel; Smith slipped and fell, momentarily grasped an iron door to save himself, and found an ore laden rock nearby at the end of his fall (Lost Treasures of California - Map & Guide).

  On November 8, 1925 the inevitable came to pass. Burts arrived at Government Holes in a model T Ford, seeking water for the radiator. His passengers were Lucinda A. Riedell and her grandson on the way to a local mine where the young man, Harold L. Fulton, had gained employment. The story goes Burts called to the shack for permission to access the water, Robinson shouted back granting it and invited Burts to come on in. Burts went, leaving Mrs. Riedell and Fulton to care for the car. As soon as Burts stepped through the door gunfire erupted. Accounts vary; however the November 9 article (AP) specifies 13 shots were fired. Both men died. Each had a .45-caliber pistol, loaded with six bullets. Some accounts suggest a rifle bullet was found in Robinson's body. A news article reports sheriff's deputies stayed on to try to determine if Burts had help from "his gang". All of this, of course, was grist for my mill. />
  When I visited Government Holes in the summer of 2016, no buildings remained. The Rock Springs Land & Cattle Company trough is still there, as is the cottonwood tree sheltering a derelict windmill. I searched through the blackbrush and found the remains of a rock foundation for a building, possibly the one where the gunfight took place.

  A great source for this story and more history of the area may be found in historian and author Dennis G. Casebier's Mojave Road Guide: An Adventure Through Time.

  Although my novel touches them but briefly, it would be wrong not to mention the Mojave, Chemehuevi and Piute bands of Indians who frequented the area before the first Europeans stepped foot on the desert. The Mojave, a strong race, walked across the desert on the original Mojave Road all the way to the Pacific Coast to trade. They subsisted with agriculture utilizing the rich flood plains of the Colorado. On the other hand, the Chemehuevi were hunter-gatherers, carving a lean cuisine from nuts and berries and an occasional rabbit, lizard or tortoise. A rock face with Chemehuevi petroglyphs may be viewed at Hole-in-the-Wall Information Center at Mojave National Preserve.

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  The Author