Finding Everett Ruess

by David Roberts

  Since all the letters from Indian traders and forest rangers had produced not a scrap of evidence as to Everett’s doings, Christopher and Stella grasped at Captain Johnson’s straw. On February 28 the man came to Los Angeles and spent the night at their home on North Kingsley Drive. Johnson claimed his knowledge of the country came from the many years he had prospected through the Southwest in search of gold. He attributed his title of captain to a stint flying planes for the Mexican government. The next day, Stella recorded in her diary, “Went to bank & took out $75.00 to give Capt. Johnson for Indian search.”

  Meanwhile, starting on March 1, a search out of Escalante had been launched by Jennings Allen. After consulting with Addlin Lay and Clayton Porter, the two sheepherders who were the last men to see Everett the previous November, Allen set out with some dozen local men on horseback down the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail. They began their search where the old trail crossed the head of Soda Gulch, the site of the sheepherders’ November campsite.

  In Soda Gulch the party found no sign of Everett’s passage, nor did they in Willow Gulch, three miles to the northwest. On March 6, however, the men rode down an old livestock trail that offered the only easy entry into Davis Gulch, yet another tributary of the Escalante, located two miles southeast of Soda Gulch. One of the searchers, Walter Allen, carved the date and his name in the sandstone cliff at the foot of the livestock trail (the inscription is still legible today). And here the party struck pay dirt.

  Exactly what the searchers found in Davis Gulch that day, however, remains a matter of controversy. In the early 1980s, several of the searchers still alive reported that as soon as they had reached the floor of the narrow canyon, they came upon Everett’s two burros. A brushwork fence had been built to confine them in a huge natural corral consisting of the upper three miles of Davis Gulch. Some of the men said the burros were thin and emaciated, but others, including Jennings Allen, swore they were “fat and healthy.”

  The searchers later testified that they found a bridle, a halter, and a rope draped on the brushwork fence. One of the men, Gail Bailey, herded the burros up the livestock trail and headed with them back to Escalante, while the others searched farther down-canyon.

  In a natural alcove not far from the foot of the livestock trail, the searchers also found unmistakable signs of what they presumed was Everett’s last camp: footprints on the ground, empty cans that had held condensed milk, candy wrappers, Anasazi potsherds (gathered, presumably, by Everett), and the impression in the dirt of a bedroll.

  The searchers were puzzled, however, to find no trace of the young man’s camping gear, cooking equipment, food, watercolor painting kit, or cash. Nor was there any sign of the journal he had kept throughout the first seven months of his 1934 expedition.

  The searchers also claimed to have found Everett’s footprints “leading to the edge of a cliff”—though which cliff, they never clarified. On March 15, Jennings Allen wrote to Christopher and Stella, “We have searched the country good on this side of the Colorado River and haven’t been able to find any fresh sign of Everett.”

  Maurice Cope, the Bryce Canyon head ranger, was deeply puzzled by the findings of the Allen party. On March 21, he wrote Christopher:

  The fact that his burros were fenced in and his camp outfit is not to be found is evident [sic] that he has a permanent camp some where. The most reasonable thing for me to believe is, that he in some way crossed the river to the east side or attempted to cross.…

  If he did not cross the river, I cannot understand why he left his burros.…

  Near where his burros were found are deep canyons and in them are signs of cliff dwellings. There is always danger in attempting to climb up to them.…

  I am very concerned and no doubt there is some need for alarm. If he established a camp some where with the intention of staying until spring every thing will be o. k.…

  If any thing has happened it would no doubt be some kind of accident.

  From far-distant China, Waldo was still trying to stay optimistic. On March 25 he wrote his parents, “And I hope he is found. He ought to get good publicity out of that & with his writing ability, capitalize on it and write magazine articles.”

  In Los Angeles, however, Christopher and Stella were consumed with anguish. In her diary on March 2, Stella recorded, “About Everett on radio. Calls from Press.” And on March 8, “Radio said Everett may be hopelessly lost.”

  The parents held out hope that someone might organize a search by airplane. In response to their appeals, on April 8 the acting U.S. Secretary of War promised an aerial search “when training flights are made over the area.” But Maurice Cope, who knew the intricacy of the Escalante wilderness firsthand, warned Christopher, “The National Park does not have an air plane. In fact an air plane in that part of the country would be of little value.” In the end, no attempt to canvass the Escalante country from the air was ever launched.

  Throughout the next three months, Stella and Christopher received a steady stream of dispatches from Captain Neal Johnson, detailing the progress of his search with Indian scouts. The reports were handwritten in pencil, the grammar and spelling semi-literate. At the head of each letter, Johnson recorded the town from which he wrote, as he performed a virtuosic crisscrossing of the Southwest: Cortez, Colorado; Holbrook, Arizona; Blanding, Utah; Richfield, Marys Vale, Hanksville, and ultimately Salt Lake City, also in Utah.

  From Cortez on March 14, Captain Johnson wrote:

  Reached here this evening.… I stoped several times to communicate with diferent Indians of diferant trading posts alond up through New Mexico and Arizona also Colorado. There is several that knew of Everet. One Chief told me today. Picture man heap savy wild mountains O.K. never the less I was unable to get any information from them concerning him nothing more than heap O.K. Picture man. He make picture for Indians.

  In the same letter, Johnson went on to assert:

  I still do not believe that Everet is in danger unless he gets abandoned from more than any one [of the Indians] because they are loyal if they are your friend. Most of the Indians know of the Paint man whitch is Everett they say he is Yabitoch which means fun, good humor.…

  In another letter, allegedly mailed from Blanding, Captain Johnson named his three Navajo scouts. They were Cidno or Cidney, Bully Chaho, and Buch Nash Chaho. “These Indians are not charging me anything Just expenses,” Johnson wrote. “They are friends of myne and they feel Owe It to me for if One or any Navajo is your friend he loves and worships you. I like them for their loyalty to me.” Another source of the scouts’ loyalty, Johnson let on, was that “I saved one of them from dying with pnemonia.”

  On April 8, Johnson wrote, again from Blanding:

  The latest Report is that it is of their opinion that your son is with two Indians Both Navajos. And that they have headed for the camp of Hostene Buchasia a Navajo Indian that lives near Navajo Mountain.… The two Indians and the white man seen to be verry clever in avoiding seeing, or litting any one see them. Hostene Buchasia is an old Indian and he knows most everything that is known about the Navajo tribe.…

  I ask [one of my scouts] what percent of chances did Everett have of being alive. He held up his hands with only one finger turned down. 9 to 1.

  From the start, Stella and Christopher had had their doubts about Captain Johnson. As early as March 4, shortly after Jennings Allen and his fellow Escalante ranchers had headed out the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail in search of Everett, Christopher and Stella had sent Johnson a telegram: “PLEASE LET ALLEN CONDUCT SEARCH INSTEAD RETURN BALANCE OUR MONEY.” Yet in the desperation of their hope that Everett was still alive, his parents clung to the strange and vivid rumors Johnson fed them. Through the end of May, they continued to send him further infusions of money and even some of Everett’s drawings and typed-out passages from his letters. In return, Johnson fawned:

  I wish that I could write like Everett it is a Gods Gift what a delightful letter to write to a boy friend the wilderness the ou
t of dorse is Everetts God his sole and heart is raped up in it.… I envy him I wish I could take his place and let him come home to you.

  Among Captain Johnson’s schemes for contacting Everett was a plan to drop handbills from an airplane over every watering hole in the Southwest. “They will settle to the Earth,” Johnson predicted, “and Everett is bound to pick one up.” To this end, on April 19, he claimed he was heading for the dirt strip that served as the Moab, Utah, airport, where he hoped to rendezvous with copilots and a plane the Ruesses might hire. “Don’t forget to Instruct the pilots to bring an Extra Parachute,” he urged. “I do not like to fly without one over a rough country.” Three weeks later, writing from Richfield, Utah, Johnson claimed he had performed the flight out of Moab, to no avail because the country was indeed too rough to fly over low to the ground.

  As the weeks sped by, one glitch after another kept thwarting Johnson’s best-laid plans. On April 29, after claiming to have met his scouts in Bluff, Utah, for an update, Johnson found Cidno, Bully Chaho, and Buch Nash Chaho in a despondent mood. They were “tired of being followed,” Johnson said, by other Navajos who were their enemies. Yet even so, the scouts delivered news that must have rent Christopher and Stella’s hearts. “I have some news for you,” Johnson warned. “I don’t know whether to consider It good or bad.” Despite the hostility of the other Navajos “following” them, the scouts “did obtain the Information that there is a white man with the two Indians. That he is well and dont want to be bothered.”

  All spring, Captain Johnson had planned to head for Navajo Mountain himself to verify the substance of his scouts’ reports. But week by week, he found reasons to delay this mission. In early June he was ready to go, when he was suddenly stricken with appendicitis. In an apologetic letter to Christopher and Stella, he pleaded that he needed time to recover from the operation to remove his appendix before he could make the arduous trip to Navajo Mountain. He thanked the Ruesses for their latest enclosure, a stipend of fifteen dollars. He claimed that he was still convinced their son was alive.

  “The money I spend on this of my own I will do of my own free will and of no obligation to you,” Johnson pledged. “I will settle or fix it some way with Everett when I locate him.”

  In retrospect, it is obvious that Captain Johnson was a complete charlatan, a con man who sucked sizable sums of money—$350, all told—out of trusting parents made frantic by a personal tragedy. As Stella and Christopher would eventually learn, it is doubtful that Johnson performed any of the deeds he claimed to have set in motion, or even that his three Navajo scouts existed. Yet for months after the parents finally confronted Johnson with their suspicions of his duplicity, he continued to sputter protestations of innocence and sincerity.

  Nor was Captain Johnson the last of the con men to see in the Ruesses’ plight an opportunity for personal gain. For years after Everett’s disappearance, a procession of sociopathic and/or delusional informants would surface, offering stunning revelations about Everett’s fate or his secret existence. And the tragedy of Christopher and Stella’s loss was exacerbated by the dogged hope that compelled them to follow each fugitive path to its bitter dead end.

  * * *

  Around March 21, a second search party set out from Escalante. Though its scope was limited, this team of ranchers on horseback made one important new discovery. “About the first of April,” a chief ranger for the National Park Service wrote the Ruesses, “footprints were seen between Davis Gulch and the Hole-in-the-Rock.” From the top of the livestock trail leading down into Davis Gulch, an overland hike of some nine miles would take a traveler to the V-notch gap in the cliff above the Colorado River, where the Mormon pioneers in January 1880 had started lowering their wagons down the precipitous nine-hundred-foot chute to the river’s edge.

  Navajos were known to keep a canoe cached at the Hole-in-the-Rock crossing, to facilitate their trading missions from the reservation to Escalante. If the footprints were Everett’s, he might have left his burros in the Davis Gulch “corral” as he headed on foot for the cleft in the plateau. As the NPS ranger speculated, “It is more probable that [Everett] has ferried his camp across the river and taken his burros back to Davis Gulch where there was water and grass.”

  This hypothesis, however, ran head-on into a cardinal objection. As the leader of yet a third search party wrote to the Ruesses in June,

  The consensus of opinion seems to be that Everett did not cross the Colorado River onto the Navajo Mountain. There was a man camped at the Hole in the Rock from about December 6 until sometime in April who seems positive that had anyone come to that place he would have seen them. In viewing this country you would agree that it is unlikely anyone could cross the river at that point without being seen by a party camped there.

  By 2009, no one in Escalante recalled the identity of this mysterious winter camper, or the purpose of his mission. But a probable answer lies carved in the rock. Along the upper third of both walls bordering the Hole-in-the-Rock cleft, passersby have carved their names, initials, and dates for more than a century. A handful of the hundreds of inscriptions derive from the original pioneers in 1880. Among these “Kilroy was here” notations, faded but still largely legible, one reads:

  Nudged by a transcription of this graffito, local writer Jerry Roundy (a distant relative of Quinn), the author of an excellent town history called “Advised Them to Call the Place Escalante,” supplied some context: “Quinn would have been herding sheep. He wasn’t the owner—he would have been working for somebody else. Sometimes they had a sheep wagon, and they’d stay out there all winter.

  “If Quinn saw Everett, I never heard him say so.”

  Dissatisfied by the necessary superficiality of the first two searches (the ranchers, after all, were taking unpaid leave from their onerous cattle- and sheep-raising chores to ride down the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail and look for clues), Ray Carr, the secretary of the Associated Civic Clubs of Southern Utah, organized a third search. It was launched in late May. Pushing down Davis Gulch farther than either of the previous parties had, this team made a pair of discoveries that has haunted Everett Ruess devotees ever since. Hurrying back to Escalante, Carr telegraphed the Ruesses on June 5, “DOES WORD NEMO HAVE ANY SIGNIFICANCE TO YOU FOUND CARVED IN CAVE.”

  In a follow-up letter, Carr elaborated:

  In one place in the lower part of the Davis Gulch an area which had not been covered before tracks made by a size 9 shoe were found leading from Escalante Creek up the Gulch to an old moquie indian [Anasazi] dwelling where the searchers found an old indian pot and other things neatly piled up by the moquie house entrance. Cattle and sheep men in this vicinity are certain that no one other than Everett was in this vicinity last year. On one of the steps leading to the entrance was found the inscription “NEMO 1934.”

  Carr’s party also found another inscription downstream from the livestock trail, near the base of an ancient Fremont pictograph panel. Drawn with charcoal in small, black characters, it too read:

  NEMO

  1934.

  The discovery set off bells in the parents’ heads. Upon receiving Carr’s telegram, Stella immediately wired back:

  EVERETT READ IN DESERT GREEK POEM ODYSSEY, TRANSLATED BY LAWRENCE OF ARABIAN DESERT. HERE ODYSSEUS GREEK WORD FOR NOBODY, “NEMO” BEING LATIN WORD FOR NOBODY. ODYSSEUS TRAPPED BY MAN-EATING GIANT IN CAVE, SAVES LIFE BY TRICK OF CALLING HIMSELF NEMO. EVERETT DISLIKES WRITING HIS OWN NAME IN PUBLIC PLACES.

  It was true that Everett had never been known to carve or scrawl his name on the walls of canyons he traveled through. But in 1931 he had twice assumed pseudonyms, calling and signing himself first Lan Rameau, then Evert Rulan, before reverting to his given appellation. The taking on of aliases went deeper than mere adolescent wordplay; it had everything to do with a discomfort with his own identity.

  None of Everett’s 1934 letters had been signed “NEMO.” If he had decided to take on yet a third pseudonym, he must have done so only in late autumn, per
haps while he camped alone in Davis Gulch.

  In Book Nine of the Odyssey, the hero and his men are trapped in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus, a one-eyed giant, who casually dashes out the brains of two of the sailors and eats their bodies raw. To save himself and his remaining men, Odysseus gets the monster drunk on good wine from his ship; in gratitude the Cyclops promises the hero a “guest-gift,” and asks him his name.

  In T. E. Lawrence’s translation, Odysseus answers, “My name is No-man: so they have always called me, my mother and my father and all my friends.” Polyphemus proffers a cruel guest-gift: “I will eat No-man finally, after all his friends. The others first—that shall be your benefit.”

  While the Cyclops is drunk, Odysseus sharpens a stake of olive wood in the fire and thrusts it into Polyphemus’s eye. Blinded, in pain and rage, the monster calls out to his fellow giants to help him finish off the humans. “What so ails you, Polyphemus,” they answer, “that you roar across the heavenly night and keep us from sleep?”

  “My friends,” Polyphemus answers, “No-man is killing me by sleight.”

  His fellow Cyclopes only laugh: “If you are alone and no one assaults you,” they jibe, “but your pain is some unavoidable malady from Zeus, why then, make appeal to your father King Poseidon.” Soon after, Odysseus’s men escape the cave by hanging on to the underbellies of the giant’s sheep and riding the animals past the furious fumblings of the Cyclops’s hands.

  To be sure, Homer never uses the word “Nemo” (he wrote, of course, in Greek, not Latin). But Everett would have linked the Latin name with the famous passage from the Odyssey, just as his mother did.

  Later, Christopher realized that NEMO also echoes Captain Nemo, the misanthropic antihero of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a well-thumbed copy of which Everett had read more than once. In the novel, after hunting what they thought was a giant sea monster all over the oceans of the world, the protagonist, the learned Professor Aronnax, and his two companions are taken captive on the captain’s mysterious submarine. There is a vivid moment when the three men first meet their jailer. In all likelihood, Everett felt a deep identification with Captain Nemo’s proclamation: “I’m not what you would call a civilized man! I’ve broken with all of society for reasons which I alone can appreciate. I therefore don’t obey its rules.”