Show the prospector and hisburn his burro 0 you look a little pink around the gills this morning said the prospector to his burro and your appearance reminds me of the mine superintendent who has been sitting up all night trying to win back the money he lost the night before bucking the tiger you say you have been thinking of lost mines again and that you are of the opinion you could go back to a discovery you had made even if years ago well a burro might do this but the average prospector cant none whatever and this brings to mind the story of another lost bonanza and I 1 will relate it while I 1 am cleaning up the breakfast dishes in the spring of 1906 1 I had a camp about three miles south of wild rose springs thirteen miles north of gold reed in the kawich range and was engaged in developing a gold ledge chih was promising on top but which grew distressingly less so as work continued however this has nothing to do with the story one day my camp was visited by a very fine appearing grey haired old gentleman who was equipped with the finest outfit consisting of mules wagon and prospecting equipment I 1 had ever seen in the desert in the evening after supper he told me this story which I 1 have no doubt was strictly true 1 I was a boy he said when breyfogle came into austin with the fabulously rich ore which set the town ablaze and started the stampede which is now a matter of history I 1 knew nothing about prospecting but I 1 joined with two young men who knew little more in outfitting outwitting out fitting with a wagon and a span of horses and we hit the trail in the rear of the procession containing at least men and boys who were equipped with every imaginable mode of travel then known to the desert the futility of the quest is well known as is also the fact from the peculiar nature of the ore which breyfogle displayed that the incomparably rich deposit from which he took it remains to this day lost to mankind after a day or two of travel we camped one night at a spring not forty miles from where we are sitting tonight the exa exact d location of which I 1 do not care to disclose during the night there came up a cold drizzling rain mixed with snow but as we had a good tent we suffered no discomfort in the morning I 1 was sent to bring in the horses which had been hobbled and turned loose I 1 soon heard the bell not a mile from camp and found his horses in a horseshoe like depression formed by the confluence of two shallow gulches they were backed up to windward of a large cropping of quartz up heaved from which and a part of the living rock was a natural monument which stood at least six feet above the general surface of the ledge I 1 took the hobbles off the horses and with one efthem of them knocked a loose piece from the edge and carried it to the wagon and threw it in without comment it was several days later that one of my partners found the rock in the wagon and broke it on the wagon wheel it glistened with gold carrying probably at the rate of from to per ton but we were so imbued with the breyfogle bug and the idea of scooping up almost pure gold from the top of the ground that my find scarcely caused comment it was not until a number of years after when I 1 was more conversant with prospecting that the value of the discovery impressed me I 1 was then and still am foreman of a large cattle concern in grass valley when my next annual vacation occurred I 1 fitted up a prospecting outfit and set out for the spring never doubting but that I 1 could go right to the ledge but in this I 1 was badly mistaken it was no trouble for me to find the spring but the ledge the horseshoe the monument were entirely lacking I 1 quartered the ground thoroughly in every direction from the spring but could find no place in the least resembling the spot from which I 1 took the gold ore the next spring I 1 went again tind the next until I 1 have made the search seven different times spending from two weeks to a month each trip and still the ledge monument and the horseshoe which had been so prominent eluded me As he was certain he had not been mistaking irisi aking the spring for another I 1 suggested that his find had been covered by one of the cloud bursts which so often visit that section he thought it possible but was loath to believe it and there so far as I 1 know the matter rests 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector trying to a discovery out in the hills after you have been absent for several years is as trying as it is for a woman to find her handbag hand band bag around the house or for a prospector to find his burro after he has been turned out for a week and there you are and then some 0 |