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Show A -MYSTERY SOLVED. ., ONLY A STRAW IN THE PATHWAY OF THE AVALANCHE. Lou of the Joe Haines rrtyTsr.iaty-thr Men, Ninety Hones and Males, With 30,000 Worth of Goods, Wiped Oat on the Kew Route Over the Mountains. The route was from Marys-rille along the right bank of the Yuba river, over the Sierra Nevada mountains and iown to Washoe City and Gold Hill, a haul of nearly 200 miles. Except in the dead of winter there were always freighters going and coming. There had been talk of a cutoff route over the mountains a route which would save many miles of heavy hauling and of unloading and reloading re-loading the great wagons but the ' freighters Btill stuck to the old trail. Every mile of it was rough and rugged, and many miles of it dangerous to man and horse as well as vehicle, but there might be more danger in the new routa In the spring of 1863 word was sent out that Captain Joe Haines was loading load-ing his 14 wagons for the Gold Hill country and would be the first to try the cutoff. Borne men sagely shook thfcir heads and recalled the stories of emigrants emi-grants lost in the grim Sierras; others applauded the captain's nerve and wished him good luck. Six heavy horses or mules to a wagon, 14 drivers, two bosses, two cooks, five men giving their services free, to' get out to the Nevada Ne-vada .mines. Twenty-three men and 90 head of live stock, and the value of the goods in the wagons was $30,000. One spring day the caravan took the road. "Word came back from it almost every day until it left the trail leading tip to the pass through which the rail road track afterward found its way. At a certain point 18 miles short of the bend in the trail the caravan turned sharp to the east to try the cutoff route. A trapper saw the wagons among the foothills, and Indian hunters saw them two days later. After that no man saw them and lived to tell of it Days and weeks passed by, and the weeks had run into months before it came to be generally gen-erally believed that the Haines, outfit had met with some disaster. That never a man had returned to Maryf f ille and never a man had reached the eastern slope meant more than disaster. It .meant a terrible tragedy. One searching party followed the wagons into the foothills and lost all trace of them. A second traced them up one valley and down another, but at a certain point time had obliterated all further evidences. "Winter came, and they were forgotten. Spring returned, and the hunters and Indians sent out Teports that the disappearance of the outfit was a mystery beyond them. Then the rumor gave out that Captain Haines had safely reached his destination, but -would return no more to Marysville. It was wartime then, and people scarcely thought of aught else but war. In another an-other year all was forgotten, save perhaps per-haps by the shippers who had had no returns re-turns and were hoping against hope. Two, three, five, ten years passed away. Old men died; boys grew to -f" manhood. The railroad came, and the 1 wagons disappeared from the trail. One cummer's day a hunter who had become separated from his companions sat down on a rock in the heart of the , mountain range to rest To the west of ' k " him there was only a narrow trail; to the east and north there was more room. As the hunter rested he scanned the hillsides to the east and north. The position po-sition of the bowlders, the size of the trees, ' the queer configuration of the slopes a dozen signs gave him to understand, under-stand, for he was something of a geologist geolo-gist that the spot was not as nature left it He clambered up the northern elope and uttered an "Ah!" of surprisa Once upon a time the ground below him had been a valley rich in grass and flowers. It was a narrow, tortuous valley not over 10 rods wide a valley connecting two larger valleys. To the east a mountain moun-tain reared its head 3,000 feet high a mountain of many mountains. Two thousand feet abovo him had been the starting point of u landslip. Millions of tons of earth and rock had been set ia motion by the rolling over of a stone which might not havoweighedahundred pounds. The discharge of a rifj the neigh of a horse, the shout of a nan, even the feet of a bird resting after a flight, might have caused the avalanche after a long spell of wet weather. It : , x ' had rushed down into that narrow val ley to fill it up as dirt fills a ditch, to bury the green grass and the tender violets vio-lets 15, 20, 30 feet deep. The rush, and the roar, and the crash must have been terrific. The man looked and descended to the trail. To him it was only a point of geology. With his own eyes he had Been one of the tremendous changes nature is constantly making in tha mountains. Ah, what's this? He has been absent less than half an hour, and yet during that time the waters from a hidden spring have gushed forth from the hillside hill-side and formed a creek, which is twisting twist-ing and turning along the trail. The hunter kneels down to drink, and his eyes rest upon a rusty gun barrel. As he pulls it out of the soil he sees the hoof of a horse with a shoe yet firmly holding hold-ing to it Two hours later two men are digging away at the bank on each side of the spring. They find the bones of a horse, the skeleton of a man, the ironwork of a wagon. They solve the mystery surrounding sur-rounding the fate of the long lost Haines party. Dead, every man and horse dead since the night they camped in "J that mountain cove and the awful ava lanche came rushing down to destroy everything in its path I Of what use for others to dig? Men must die,' and men must be buried. They were buried so deep that trees took root and threw out great branches above them as they slept Twenty-three men, 90 horses and mules, 14 wagons, $30,000 worth of cargo-only cargo-only a straw in the pathway of the avalanche ava-lanche Detroit Free Press. |