Ghost Rider: Stories by Jonathan Lowe

by Jonathan Lowe

  Where was grandfather's final home? Was it worth it to him? Will it be for me? Or is all gold fool's gold?

  * * * *

  Sept 19

  As I move into the Chiricahua mountains I see a rocky topography. Giant monoliths of stone towering a hundred feet or more, some house-sized boulders perched precariously on ledges. Rocks and boulders strewn everywhere—fractured, upright, or fallen—the result of ancient upheavals. I'm reminded of a Clint Eastwood movie, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Clint's character knew it was the grave with no name which held the treasure, but his partner only knew which cemetery. Amid so many rocks, now, I know neither.

  Galeyville this time.

  I roar over the crest of a hill, the hot wind drying the moisture of my eyes, making me blink against the glare off all that granite.

  Galeyville ... is there anything left? The book says no. Only a sign. Nothing left of a dozen saloons, restaurants, lumberyards, mercantile stores. No trace of the dairy, the jeweler, the shoemaker, the Wells Fargo office, the assayer, the newspaper. Nothing to tell the story of the rustlers who came here to divide their stolen Mexican cattle. Johnny Ringo, and even Curly Bill with his crisscrossed 44s and wide-brimmed sombrero. No legacy of John H. Galey, that oilman and financier from Pennsylvania who was attracted by the high price of silver here, bought a claim, and founded the boom camp of Galeyville in 1881. A broken dream. Galey left in debt, and the wooden buildings of the town were later carted away to the nearby town of Paradise, which was established in 1901.

  I'm too far east now for any two day ride, even by stagecoach, so I've decided to head back west.

  * * * *

  Sept 20

  After much more riding comes another night filled with stars, thoughts of time, infinity, and the possibility of someone finding my bleached bones out here. I arise at dawn to cook breakfast over a glowing fire inside a tight ring of stones. Canned corned beef hash, instant coffee. Gathering up my bed roll, I try to forget nightmares of a tarantula crawling across my face. Of scorpions and rattlers crawling into my tent. I listen to the Silence and realize how far civilization seems from this place now. Is it even there? From horizon to horizon nothing but desert and deserted hills.

  I touch the engine of my BMW, wanting to feel its brief and unnatural coolness. I check my gas tank, then crank up, throttling open the carbs like lungs, feeling the machines breathe, alive for the quest. I touch the engine again. Already the coolness is gone, the result of multiple explosions of hydrocarbons deep within the metallic pulsing heart of the machine. Scrubbing camp, I ride out.

  First stop, Sunnyside.

  Fifteen miles southwest of Fort Huachuca I arrive at Arizona's most unusual mining camp. It was here that Sam Donnelly preached to the Donnellites, as they were called. Once the site of the Copper Glance mine, a community formed around listening to Brother Donnelly read the Bible. And after working the ore, instead of getting drunk and gambling, the people here would sing hymns and pray. Laying up treasures in heaven while they mined them down below?

  "Imagine that,” I remember telling George. “And you say there weren't any gunfights or robberies, or any saloons to bust up?"

  "Nope. Was a communal kitchen, an outreach ministry to help other miners, and music lessons insteada cussin'. Rumor had it before Donnelly rediscovered the mine here in 1887 and got saved, he was big at the bars in Frisco. But after that sure enough—he was a changed man! Donated cash to help students, and always gave to people in need who visited."

  "So what happened to the people?"

  "After he died the mine closed, gradually they left."

  After circling the remains of this serene mountain meadow, so did I.

  * * * *

  Mid Morning

  I've ridden into a deserted settlement, an oasis of green ten miles southeast of the tree-shaded town of Patagonia. A creek crosses the road here in Harshaw, which before 1873 was known as Durasno. Along Harshaw's solitary street were once stores, corrals, blacksmith shops, saloons, hotels, and offices of the Arizona Bullion, the local paper. Only one condemned house remains below the cemetery on the hill.

  At the cemetery I met a 76 year old man named Ernesto, doing some work with his grandson on the crumbling mortar of several graves. He said his mother and father were buried here, and told me where to find the old Hermosa mine, discovered by David Harshaw in 1877 and later bought by the Hermosa Mining Company, which erected a 20 stamp mill. Following a primitive road which forked off further south, I arrive at the site. Old photographs show the Hermosa mill, workmen standing on top of a massive A-frame proudly, others lowering long planks which bend under their weight. Now there is only rubble, rusted bolts, and foundation pilings poking up through heaps of stone. Below the mill the jagged hole of the mine itself is partially hidden among the thickets.

  There must have been much noise and activity here a hundred years ago, but when I kill the engine to rest, I immediately notice the silence. It's only a peaceful meadow surrounded by steep mountains now, no matter how hard the work must have been here then. Experiencing this quiet, it's hard for me to interpret the unsmiling faces on the children standing outside the Harshaw school. Did they guess their future in the mine? Or was it merely awe at the idea of a black box which could preserve their images forever? I look at the spot where they stood, and at the surrounding hills, and finally shake my head. Another town bites the dust. Although the post office persisted here until 1903, when the value of silver declined most of the residents deserted.

  And now so would I.

  * * * *

  Noon

  Am I too far from Tucson for my grandfather to have made a two-day trek back to grandmother on horseback? Despite my growing frustration, brother, I can't think of giving up yet. A process of elimination, like sifting tons of ore to come up with the nugget you hope is there.

  Five miles further south of Patagonia now, in Santa Cruz county. On May 7, 1866, a post office was established here in a place named by Sylvester Mowry, a Lieutenant in the Union army. Mowry had purchased the Patagonia mine, and erected a smelter. Then, after being arrested for selling lead to the Confederate Army for ammunition, he was jailed at the infamous Yuma Territorial prison. So during the Civil War the Apaches raided the area and reduced both the smelter and Mowry's town to rubble. It didn't come back until 1905, although there was a huge Fourth of July celebration there in 1891, with fireworks, dancing, and speeches. Since 1913 only a small cluster of deteriorating abode buildings remained. And a cemetery. Mowry's grave is not there, though. He died in England after being released from Yuma.

  After dropping a stone down a mineshaft and counting off six seconds before it hit bottom, I ride out.

  * * * *

  About 3 P.M.

  I'm about 17 miles east of Nogales now. This was known as Washington camp in 1880, then as Duquesne in 1890. Two towns, actually. Very close together. A reduction plant in Washington, a mining company in Duquesne. A fine school here. A thousand residents, including, so it's said, George Westinghouse at one time. He had hot and cold running water in his home.

  Time to head north again. Closer to Tucson.

  * * * *

  The 21st

  Time is the mystery. My days turn relentlessly toward a seasonless season of more heat and sudden storms, which gust and go. Another sunrise, another orange stepladder of clouds slowly raising the sun up from behind low rolling hills. What am I doing out here? I wonder. I should be easy on the couch, watching some Hollywood vision of history.

  "Help me,” I said, and pointed at another point on my map. “Can you tell me where to find this place?"

  "There?” The rancher named Cory scans my map, then looks up in obvious bewilderment. “Why you want to find that place?"

  "That's where a man named John Dillon discovered a silver-lead mine in 1879. When they asked him what he'd name the place he said it looked like a total wreck. Then in 1881 the Empire Mining and Development Company bought the place, and constructe
d a mill. The town grew up around it."

  "What town?” Cory asked.

  "I just showed you. Total Wreck. Fifty houses, four saloons, three hotels, a butcher shop, general store, and lumberyard."

  "You're kidding."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Well, because there's none a’ that there now."

  "I know that,” I replied, exasperated. “Just like I know that no Apaches are gonna be coming down from the cliffs to surprise some Mexicans cutting wood, like they did in 1883!"

  Cory laughed. “That's good, ‘cause if you're looking for Geronimo, he's gone too. Only outlaws out there now are drug runners from Mexico."

  "Few and far between, I trust."

  "If you're lucky. Maybe you heard the one about a guy named Salsig got in an argument in Total Wreck with a man who drew a gun and shot him? Salsig had a thick packet of love letters in his vest pocket stopped the bullet, and he lived to marry the lady who wrote him the letters."

  "Nobody loves me. I better look out. That what you're saying?"

  Cory laughed harder. “If the boot fits."

  Following his directions, I finally come to the cliffs surrounding the old townsite, making the note: no anvil-shaped rock, no boulders. Could they have been moved? I hadn't considered that possibility. Just to make sure, I recheck the dates. The mine closed in 1884, then the property was sold for taxes. Although the Total Wreck post office wasn't discontinued until 1890.

  I climb the bad road out of there in one long third gear moan.

  * * * *

  1 P.M.

  "Boulders on a cliff? Lots a’ rocks round here. Why you lookin’ fer them? Got rocks in yer head, have ya?"

  That's what an old timer named Frank told me. Lifted his hand against the sun, cocked his head, and glared at my iron steed—wheels and engine seined with a heavy layer of dust, idling on the slope of a hill. Then he nods, but whether with admiration or a sense of secret confirmation I can't tell. His mind tracks the rails of his recollections like a runaway train in a broken switchyard.

  "Rugged area, this,” Frank declares as a cow blundered by me toward the pasture below. “Yeah, hard ta believe it used ta be a boom town, ain't it? Yup ... Placer gold panned outta here back in the 1880's by over five hundred men and women. Jail was a hole dug in the ground. Used ta cart water on burros from yonder Gardner Canyon. Mexicans here liked ta dance, too. Organized a baile once and tried ta lock out the cowboys from the nearby Empire Ranch so they wouldn't steal their senoritas. Cowboys, they poured bullets down the smoking chimney! Girls came a-pourin’ out, and they had'em partners fer the next dance! Later on, the cowboys invited the Mexicans over to the Empire to make up for it, though."

  I tell him about why I was there. Then I thank him and circled above the spot, moving outward in wider and wider concentric circles, up and over the surrounding hills, further and further away from what was once Greaterville.

  * * * *

  3:45

  Thirty miles southeast of Tucson, after skirting that rugged dirt pass across from Greaterville, I stop at a basin at the foot of an impressive cluster of mountains.

  Looking north into the distant haze from the Santa Ritas, I can see the second largest city in Arizona—the ‘Old Pueblo,’ as it's called. In that valley surrounded on its other three sides by the massive Catalinas, the jagged Tucsons, and the rolling Rincons the lives of over a million people live to accumulate green pieces of paper which are no longer fully backed by silver or gold. Taco franchises, factories, shopping malls. Compare that with what's left of a vanished town which was abandoned in our rush to the future, this one called Helvetia. Only one building's crumbling adobe walls remains as a token reminder that there were once three hundred people here, living in an assortment of buildings, tents, and shanties. Only a few scattered planks amid the cresote bushes to indicate that this place was once home to humans whose skulls are now cavities somewhere buried in the hot sands. The Old Frijole Mine, the 150 ton smelter, all the investments made by the Helvetia Copper Company of New Jersey ... where were they now?

  Astride my slowly cooling bike I contemplate the date. 1885.

  After a solemn walk through the debris I find a tiny cemetery, check for names amid the weeds and barrel cactus. Then I scan the mountains with binoculars, and finally mount my iron steed.

  "Giving up yet?” the wind seems to ask.

  I can't say, but doubt if my tenacity matches those of such prospectors as grandad. Perhaps it's time to go north of Tucson instead of south.

  * * * *

  22nd, Noon

  In 1873 General George Stoneman was constructing a road to Camp Picketpost in the Pinal mountains. One night a soldier named Sullivan returned with some strange black rocks he'd found which flattened when he tried to break them. He showed the rocks to many people, but never said where he found them. Then he disappeared—taken, it was thought, by Apaches. Two years later a rancher named Charles Mason went to Globe with some friends. On their return they were ambushed by Apaches, and one of them was killed. They took the body to Stoneman's camp to bury, and while there one of their mules wandered away toward the foot of Stoneman's Grade—the road the General had constructed for better accessibility to the camp. While retrieving the mule, a man named Copeland discovered the same silver outcropping Sullivan had found. Years later, in 1882, a man appeared at the boom town of Silver King to look for work. It was Sullivan, the same man who'd discovered the strange black rocks in the early 1870s.

  Perry Wildman, Silver King Store. Begs leave to call the attention of the people to the fact that he is in receipt of largest and best assortment of General Merchandise. Clothing & furnishing goods. Boots & shoes. Hats & caps. Groceries & Hardware. Miners tools, blasting powder. Flour & Grain. Tin & Glassware. Wallpaper, paints, etc, etc. Freighting to Globe. Goods delivered to all the camps. Perry Wildman, proprietor.

  Silver King died in 1888 with the drop of the price of silver. Did grandfather die in 1889 of heartbreak?

  * * * *

  About 4 P.M.

  I'm in the middle of some vast valley maybe thirty miles southwest of Casa Grande. I can't go on tonight. I've been out in the desert for over a week, and there's no end to it. Not much left but dirt, sand, rocks. Of course gold is a rock, right?

  Maybe the heat's getting to me. Ahead somewhere's the Vekol mountains, but I feel wasted. I need a cold bath, a cool hotel restaurant. At least I know what it was like for those prospectors now. I'm even thinking maybe it shouldn't matter what happened to grandfather. Maybe I should just give up, go back to Tucson, eat at the Golden Coral, and wonder.

  * * * *

  23rd

  Vekol. It's where two brothers fought over a silver mine back in the 1880s. One of the brothers went to Tucson to get married, and the other tried to get the marriage annulled because he didn't want the wife to inherit part of the $3 million dollar stake. Then a third brother joined in and sent the first to the Napa Insane Asylum, where he died.

  It's so quiet out here, and luckily not as hot today. I wasted a lot of time looking around. Just some adobe walls left standing. Mill ruins. Used to be homes here, a school, boarding house, post office, even a library. A quiet, peaceful town that didn't need a jail, and only had one saloon, and it went out of business. Like Sunnyside, only this mining company was just strict about drinking and crime.

  What a shame. I know they coulda used a cold one, too.

  I've decided tonight to chase the tumbleweeds back to Casa Grande for a beer and a room at the local Motel 6 before heading southwest of Tucson for one final search.

  * * * *

  24th, Morning

  The Indian was walking beside the fence when I stopped to ask directions to the Cerro Colorado. After I explained my reasons he replied in broken English that I couldn't get there from here. I laughed, thinking it a joke.

  "Where you want to go is where your grandfather was,” he told me. Then he put something into my hand. “I've been waiting to give this to s
omeone,” he said. “This for you."

  I looked down. It was the amulet, he explained, of an Indian shaman—his grandfather.

  "It will grant you one wish. Make certain this the right one."

  * * * *

  Near Noon

  Cerro Colorado. This is where it was, anyway.

  I roll out past some mesquite, killed my engine. There's nothing but a few crumbling walls here on this barren stretch of mesa some 55 miles southwest of Tucson.

  But somehow I feel it. Something beyond the statistics. This village ... this usual assortment of buildings. A town plaza here, perhaps. A tower and fortification to protect the mine workings. Something more about it. Something right.

  I've check my book. Cerro Colorado, established in the 1860s. Post office established April 17, 1879, discontinued April, 1911. Yes ... Sam Heintzelman of the Sonora Exploring & Mining Company. He's the one they named the big silver mine here after. The Heintzelman. Apaches raided the place a couple times, too. Then after the Civil War a John Poston was left in charge of the mine workings and he caught his foreman heading south to Mexico with a stolen load of silver bullion.

  Poston executed him as an example to his Mexican workers. Only it backfired. More miners stole from the mine, and deserted to Sonora. And a story leaked down there that this guy Poston had executed buried $70,000 in bullion somewhere near the mine. So some Mexican outlaws rode up, ransacked the mine workings, and murdered Poston when he got in the way. But they never found that bullion, and no one ever has.

  I'm staring at some scattered bricks when the weirdest thought hits me: a hundred years ago a man stood out here and wondered what this would look like to someone in a hundred years. Well, I guess this is it, and I'm that “someone.” I just wish I was the one to find the bullion, too.

  * * * *

  Sept. 25, 11 A.M.

  Not sure where I am now. My motorcycle died. I don't understand it. I've checked out the engine, but nothing seems wrong. And just when I'm seeing what might be two large boulders on the apex of a hill to the left! Something beyond there too—a mirage? No, it's more than just shimmers of light.