CHAPTER III.
“The storm is abroad in the mountains.”
The Santa Catalina Mountains, although commonly designated as a part of the Sierra Madres, are, in truth, a small, isolated range, towering to a height of seven or eight thousand feet above the surrounding plains. They are steep, rugged, and practically inaccessible, except at the eastern end, where they may be entered through a long, narrow, crooked canyon, which runs from the plain or mesa to within a short distance of the summit. This canyon widens at intervals into small valleys, few of which exceed a dozen acres in extent, and through it the Rillito, a mountain stream, carrying, ordinarily, about five hundred miner’s inches of water, tumbles and splashes. Along and above the bed of this stream, at a height of fifty feet or more, in order to avoid the freshets created by the summer rains, runs a very primitive wagon road, which was constructed for the purpose of allowing supplies to be transported to the miners, who, during the era of high prices for copper, were engaged in taking ore from the carbonate lodes which exist in abundance in a range of hills half way to the summit and ten miles from the mouth of the canyon.
The lower hills of the Santa Catalinas are covered with a scant growth of mesquite and palo verde, along the Rillito there is a fringe of willows and cottonwoods, and near the summit is a large body of pine timber, but its practical inaccessibility and distance from any available market have protected it from the woodman’s ax. The absence of any extent of agricultural or grazing land in the Santa Catalinas has proven a bar to their occupation by settlers, and their isolation, rugged nature, and unpromising geological formation, have deterred prospectors from thoroughly exploring them. Such searchers for treasure as visited them always returned with a verdict of “no good,” until a quasi understanding was reached by the miners and prospectors of Arizona that it was useless to waste time looking for gold or silver in their fastnesses.
Above the copper belt no prospector was ever able to find trace or color of any metal, and the low price of copper and the high charges for railroad freight which prevailed in 1883 and succeeding years, caused abandonment of the rude workings for that metal, and at the date of the opening of our narrative it might have been truly said that the entire Santa Catalina Range was without an occupant.
At the western and southern end of the range its summit and rim consist of a huge basaltic formation, towering perpendicularly one thousand feet, upon the apex of which probably no human footstep was ever placed, for its character excluded all probability of quartz being found there, even by the Arizona prospector, who will climb to any place that can be reached by a goat or an eagle, if so be silver and not scenery entice him.
In the spring of 1892 Robert Steel, who, in years gone, had acted as superintendent of a copper company operating in the Santa Catalinas, and was familiar with the ground, had been inspired by a considerable advance in the price of copper to visit the scene of his former labors and relocate the abandoned claims. It was at his solicitation and representations that David Morning, who had known him well in Colorado, was induced to take a trip to Arizona to examine the properties.
Robert Steel was designated by those who knew him best as “a true fissure vein.” With hair that was unmistakably red, and eyes that were blue as the sky, with the upper part of his face covered with tan and freckles, and the lower part disguised by a heavy brick-red beard, his personal appearance was not entirely prepossessing to the casual observer. But under the husk of roughness was a heart both tender and true, a loyalty that would never tire, a thorough knowledge of his business as a miner, and a tried and dauntless courage that, in the performance of duty, would, to quote the vernacular of the Arizonian, “have fought a rattlesnake, and given the snake the first bite.”
He carried his forty years with the vigor of a boy, and his occasional impecuniosity, which he accounted for incorrectly by saying that he “had been agin faro,” was in fact the result of continued investments in giving an education to his two young brothers, and furnishing a comfortable home and support for his parents and sisters in Wisconsin.
There are many Robert Steels to be found among the prospectors of the far West. They are the brightest, bravest, most generous, enterprising, and energetic men on earth. They are the Knights Paladin, who challenge the brute forces of nature to combat, the soldiers who, inspired by the aura sacra fames, face the storm and the savage, the desert and disease. They crawl like huge flies upon the bald skulls of lofty mountains; they plod across alkaline deserts, which pulse with deluding mirages under the throbbing light; they smite with pick and hammer the adamantine portals of the earth’s treasure chambers, and at their “open sesame” the doors roll back and reveal their stores of wealth.
They are readier with rifle or revolver than with scriptural quotation, and readier yet with “coin sack” at the call of distress, and they are not always unaccustomed to the usages of polite society, though they scorn other than their occasional exercise. Under the gray shirts may be found sometimes graduates from Yale, and sometimes fugitives from Texas, but always hearts that pulse to the appeals of friendship or the cries of distress, even “as deeps answer to the moon.”
Among these pioneers no one man assumes to be better than another, and no man concedes his inferiority to anybody. In the last forty years they have carried the civilization, the progress, and the power of the nineteenth century to countries which were beforetime unexplored. In their efforts some have found fortune and some have found unmarked graves upon the hillside. Some with whitened locks but spirits yet aflame continue the search for wealth, and some, wearied of the search, patiently await the summons to cross the ridge. Wherever they roam, and whether they spin the woof of rainbows upon this or upon the other side, they will be happy, for they will be busy and hopeful, and labor and hope carry their heaven with them evermore.
Two days after the arrival of David Morning at Tucson he left for the Santa Catalinas. The party consisted of Morning and Steel and two miners who were employed for the expedition. A wagon drawn by four serviceable mules was loaded with tools, tents, camp equipages, saddles and bridles, provisions, and grain for the animals sufficient for a week’s use. Late in the afternoon of the second day the site of the copper locations was reached, and a camp made upon the mesa a few hundred feet from and above the bed of the stream.
A cursory examination of the copper locations made before nightfall satisfied Morning that before he could form any judgment upon which he would be willing to act in making a purchase, it would be necessary to clean out one of the old shafts, which had, since the mines were abandoned, been partially filled with loose rock and earth. This work it was estimated could be performed by Robert Steel and his two miners in about three days, and while it was being done Morning proposed to explore, or at least visit, the source of the stream, near the summit of the range ten miles away. Assuring Steel that he was an old mountaineer, and that no apprehensions need be felt for his safety if he did not return until the end of two or three days, Morning saddled one animal, and, loading another with blankets, camp equipage, a pick, a fowling-piece, and three days’ provisions, he departed next morning, after an early breakfast, for the trip up the cañon.
Above the old copper camp the wagon road came to an end, and only a rough trail running along and often in the creek took its place. Following the trail, Morning proceeded, driving his pack mule ahead, until, at a point about six miles from where he had left his companions, further progress with animals was found to be impossible.
One hundred feet above the bed of the stream, which here emerged with a rush from a narrow gorge, was a plateau of probably ten acres in extent, on which were a number of large oak trees, and the ground of which was at this season covered with a heavy growth of alfilaria, or native clover. Here Morning unloaded and tethered his mules, and made for himself a temporary camp under a huge live oak tree.
After eating his luncheon, he buckled a pistol about his waist, that he might not be altogether unprepared for a possible deer, and, using a pole-pick for a walking staff, he climbed out of the cañon and commenced the ascent of the mountain to the southward. It appeared to be about a thousand feet in height, and upon its summit towered, one thousand feet higher, the basaltic wall which Morning recognized as that which was visible from Tucson, and which formed the southern and western rim of the Santa Catalina Mountains. His purpose was to reach at least the base of this wall, and ascertain if there were any means of ascending it to its summit, from which it might be possible to obtain an extended view of the country.
After half an hour’s hard climbing, our adventurer gained this wall and found along its base a natural road, with an ascent of probably three hundred feet to the mile. Slowly plodding his way among the loose rock and débris, which had, during many ages, scaled and fallen from the basalt, he soon reached an opening about sixty feet in width.
Supposing that this might be a cañon or gorge that would furnish a means of ascending the wall, he turned into it. In a little more than a quarter of a mile it came to an abrupt termination. It was a cul de sac, a rift in the wall made in some convulsion of nature. It ascended very slightly, being almost level, and at both sides and at the end the basalt towered for a thousand feet sheer to the summit, without leaving a break upon which even a bird could set its foot. It was now midday, but the rays of the sun did not penetrate to the bottom of this rift, and the atmosphere and light were those of an autumn twilight.
After ascertaining the nature and extent of the gorge, Morning turned, and, plodding through the sand and loose rock to its entrance, resumed his journey along the base of the great wall. The ascent of the little ridge or natural road grew steeper and steeper, until at length the top was reached, and our explorer stood upon the summit of the great basaltic formation, a mile in width and ten miles in length, which forms the southwestern rim or table of the Santa Catalinas. From near the outer edge spread as grand a prospect as was ever vouschafed to the eye of mortal. Tucson, seven thousand feet below and fifteen miles away, seemed almost at the foot of the mountain. To the southeast stretched a narrow, winding ribbon of green, the homes of the Mexicans, who, with their ancestors, have for more than two centuries occupied the valley of the Santa Cruz. Farther yet to the southward the lofty Huachucas towered. Northward a higher peak of the Catalinas cut off the view, but to the southwest broad mesas and billowy hills stretched for more than a hundred and fifty miles, until at the horizon the eye rested upon the blue of the Gulf of California, penciled against an ashen strip of sky.
As Morning gazed in awe and delight, there appeared in the sky, scudding from the south, flecks of cloud, chasing each other like gulls upon an ocean, and remembering that this was the rainy season, and feeling rather than knowing that a storm was about to gather, Morning retraced his steps. He had proceeded on his return to a point about five hundred yards above the mouth of the rift which he had visited on his upward journey, when the rapidly-darkening clouds and big plashes of rain drops warned him that one of the showers customary in that section in August was about to fall.
Such storms are usually of brief duration, but are liable to be exceedingly violent, the water often descending literally in sheets. It would have been impossible for Morning to reach the camp where he had left the animals in time to avoid the storm, and a hollow in the basalt wall—a hollow which almost amounted to a cave—offering just here a complete shelter from the rain, which was approaching from the south, over the top of the wall, he sought the opening, and was soon seated upon a convenient rock, while his vision swept the slope to the cañon a mile below, and thence followed the meanderings of the Rillito until it vanished from sight.
And the clouds grew and darkened. Like black battalions of Afrites summoned by the “thunder drum of heaven,” they trooped from distant mountains and nearer plains to gather upon the summit of the Catalinas. The south wind—now risen to a gale—swooped up the fogs from the distant gulf, and hurried them upon its mighty pinions, shrieking with delight at the burden it bore up to the summit of the basalt, above which it massed them.
Then the demons of the upper ether reached their electric-tipped fingers into the dense black watery masses, and whirled them into a denser circle, whirled them into an hour glass, whose tip was in the heavens and whose base was carried by the giant force thus generated slowly along and just above the top of the great wall.
Whirled in a demon waltz to the music of the shaking crags, yet touching not those peaks, for to touch them would have been destruction, the circling ocean in the air sailed, roaring and shrieking, to the eastward, growing denser and more powerful, and black with the blackness of the nethermost pit, as it journeyed on. At last it reached the blind cañon so lately visited by our explorer. The air—imprisoned between the earth and the clouds—rushed with a tortured yell down the rift in the mountain. The wall of water sank as its support tumbled from beneath it; its base touched the ragged rocky edges of the cleft; the compactness of the fluid mass was broken, and the forces fled and left to its fate the watery monster they had engendered.
Then, with a roar louder than a thousand peals of thunder, with throbs and gaspings like the death rattle of a giant, the waterspout burst, and its vast volume descended into the gorge, down which it seethed with the power of a cataclysm.
Out of the mouth of the cul de sac a torrent issued, or rather a wall of water hundreds of feet in height. Down the mountain side it sped, tearing a channel deep and wide, and crumbling into a thousand cataracts of foam, which spread and submerged the slope. A deep depression or basin on the side of the mountain just southward of the bed of the Rillito deflected the torrent for a few hundred yards, and it rushed into this basin and filled it, and, leaving a small lake as a souvenir of its visit, went roaring down the cañon, which it entered again about a quarter of a mile below the spot where Morning had tethered his mules.
Not more than fifteen minutes had elapsed since the bursting of the waterspout when the storm was over, the sun was shining, the water had departed down the cañon, and our awe-stricken witness to this mighty sport of elemental forces started to retrace his steps. He had witnessed the deflection of the water wall, and knew that his animals were safe, and he also knew that no harm would come to his companions down the cañon, for their camp was hundreds of feet above the bed of the ravine.
A few minutes’ walk brought Morning to the mouth of the gorge which he had visited an hour or more before. From it a small stream of water—the remains of the waterspout—was yet running, and, being curious to observe the effects produced upon the spot which first received the fury of the waters, he descended into the channel which had been torn by the torrent, and again entered the rift.
The tremendous force of the vast body of water precipitated into the gorge had excavated and swept through its opening the fallen and decomposed rock and sand and bowlders which had been accumulating for centuries. The channel rent by the waters as they emerged was quite twenty feet in depth and sixty feet in width, and Morning found that the floor of the box cañon had been torn away to a similar depth.
The waterspout had accomplished in one minute a work that would have required the industrious labor of one thousand men for a month. The gorge was swept clean to the bed rock, which showed blue limestone, and in the center of this limestone bed there now stood erect, to a height of twelve feet, a ledge of white and rose-colored quartz of regular and unbroken formation, forty feet in width, running from near the entrance of the rift to the end of it, where it disappeared under the basalt wall.
The experienced eye of Morning taught him at a glance that this was a true fissure vein of quartz, and a brief examination of some pieces which he knocked off with his pole-pick convinced him that it was rich in gold. But for the waterspout which had swept away the sand, gravel, and loose rocks which ages of disintegration of the face of the wall had deposited over this lode, its existence must ever have remained undiscovered for there were no exterior evidences of the existence of quartz, to tempt a prospector to sink a shaft.
The primal instinct of the miner is to locate his “find,” and Morning proceeded forthwith to acquire title to “the unoccupied mineral lands of the United States” so marvelously brought to light. His notebook furnished paper for location notices, and an hour’s work enabled him to build location monuments of loose stone, in which his notices were deposited.
It was now more than two hours since the waterspout had expended its force. Morning conjectured that Steel and his miners, after the flood had passed them, would probably set out in search of him, and he did not wish his location to be discovered until he should have perfected it by recording at Tucson, and possibly not then. But he knew that it would require at least three hours for the men at the copper-camp to reach him, and, though the light in the cañon was beginning to grow dim, he determined not to leave there without further examination of the ledge.
Accordingly, he walked around it and climbed over it. From its summit and its sides at twenty different places he broke off specimens, which he deposited in his pockets until they were full to bursting. It was beginning to grow dark when he emerged from the rift and started along the base of the basalt. He had not proceeded a hundred yards from the mouth of the rift, when he beheld three figures a quarter of a mile distant, rapidly picking their way along the channel which had been worn by the torrent in its descent of the mountain.
Five minutes more in the gorge and his secret would have been discovered.
He shouted to his friends, who responded to his hail, and in a few minutes they met and descended the mountain together to the plateau under the trees, where the tethered animals, surfeited with alfilirea, were whinnying loudly for human companionship.
It was too late to attempt to return to the copper-camp that night, and, indeed, daylight was needed for the journey, for the trail had been in many places washed away by the flood.
After a supper, which made havoc with the three days’ rations, a large fire was built, more for cheerfulness than for warmth, blankets were divided, and all retired.
Morning slept less soundly than his fellows, for his quick and accurate brain was filled with an idea of the colossal fortune and the mighty trust that the events of that day had placed in his hands.