Show the prospector and his burro burr 0 ft 9 fill ilkiv 1 I 1 want to tell you sa said id the prospector to his burro there are people who have the big head so bad that they have a desire to impress all whom they may meet that they have the wisdom of solomon and they make assertions which are sometimes as far removed from the truth as you are being winner in a race with a speedy horse in small matters the assertions made by such individuals count but little but there are occasions when their statements misstatements mis not to use a more emphatic term may mean the loss of human life or lead to great distress and suffering especially is this the case where the swell headed man attempts to give information and direction regarding the location of water and the proper road to take in m this desert region when as a matter of fact he knows nothing of the country and is only talking through his hat when he tells the traveler where water holes abound and where he can find a good camping place at night 1 I see that you are interested when I 1 speak of camping places and I 1 cannot blame you for this for if there is one thing you like next to a close association with a sack of barley it is a watering place in a canyon around which there is plenty of good grass and it is just such a place that the traveler seeks when crossing the windswept wind swept mountain ranges and valleys of this southern country and it is worse than criminal to tell a man that he will find water fifteen miles out of vegas when as a matter of fact it is more than forty if you will remember continued the prospector it is now hardly a month since we came across a woman and her son in the desert twenty miles out of vegas who were nearly dead from thirst the woman was going to goldfield to meet her husband and was told by the conceited liar at vegas that there was plenty of water along the road and that she could make the journey with ease and comfort the woman and her son were on horseback and thinking that water would be plentiful along the route they had taken only two canteens of water with them not far out the couple came to a dry lake they crossed this and as the weather was hot and and the road dusty they soon exhausted their water supply they thought but little of this however as they expected to reach water within the next five miles or so so they went on during the dy daay but no water was found during the night they wandered about lost the road and when we found them near our camp in the morning the woman was prostrate on the sand her tongue was protruding and awfully swollen and she was on the point of dissolution her son was in about the same condition but a little care on my part and the judicious use of my my water bag soon brought them out of danger when the woman trembling and with tears in her eyes told me how the vegas rascal had misdirected them sending them into the desert to almost certain death 1 I want to tell you old long ears such petty larceny liars are a menace to any community and should be tarred and feathered er ed and ridden on a rail there should be no place in this country for them none whatever they are worse than the hot air merchant the claim jumper the fake stock manipulator and then some A community can stand almost any rascality up to a certain limit one can discount the fakir run the claim jumper out of the district at the point of a gun and take the statement of the hot air fiend with a grain of salt but it is difficult to circumvent the tha danger which goes hand in hand with death when the swell head attempts to direct the tenderfoot traveler to the watering placed inthe desert it takes an old timer to survive the desert and even a burro will leave his bones on the sand when his master has taken the advice and direction of the would be solomon to the town whose are limited to the few hundred yards leading from the shade of a joshua to the bar and roulette wheel there are all kinds of fakirs fakiri in this western country but the man who gives wrong directions to the ignorant traveler is the limit and there you are |