In the fall of 1879 Baker concluded to make a trip to Leadville, which
was then in the height of prosperity, and taking his rifle, blankets,
and a few days’ rations, set out on foot. He reached Leadville safely,
and a few days later died of pneumonia. As no one claimed the few
chattels, including the valise, which Baker left behind, Captain Watt as
a matter of course took them. He searched everywhere for the map by
which Baker set so much store, and not finding it, concluded it was
concealed about his clothing and had been doubtless buried with him. And
so years passed on, but the straight story the man had so often told
around the cabin fire in the silence of night, was never forgotten by
Watt, who, in the lonely hours among the towering peaks of the Rocky
Mountains, had thought of it a thousand times.
But one day, the hand of Fate and Chance took a part.
Captain Watt needed a strip of leather. There was none to be found.
Finally, his eye rested upon the old valise which had once been the
property of Irwin Baker, which had tumbled about prospectors’ cabins for
the last ten years. It was worn out, but the sides would make the strip
of leather the captain wanted. The first slash of his knife revealed
between the outside and the lining a folded sheet of paper, yellowed
with age, and a closer examination proved it to be the carefully
prepared map which Irwin Baker had concealed ten years before. The lines
were drawn with the skill of a civil engineer, and the places so plainly
marked that a party instantly formed, believed they would have no
difficulty in going straight to the lost mine.
Three others, myself and Captain Baker staked our time and money on the
venture, and another month found us in the country called Coconino in
Arizona through which the Colorado River crosses with many a curve and
twist. It lies in the northern part of the great Colorado plateau and
west of the Moqui country.
John Bowden, a young civil engineer, was one of our party. He had
studied at Ann Arbor and also at the University of Minnesota. His field
work covered about five years prior to joining us. He was not familiar
with the Southwest, its climate and peculiar topography, but others of
the party were, and in view of his knowledge of civil engineering he was
considered a valuable man to us.
The sun shines in Coconino. It hangs day after day above Lava Butte, the
Painted Desert, Shinumo Altar, and the Black Falls, as if it were a
destroying angel, not the kindly orb that flashes in the northern belt,
but a consuming, terrifying demon of the desert wastes from which there
is no escape. Those who toil in the city’s ways think the sun is hot,
that the humidity is deadly, that pain such as theirs is unknown. They
have never looked up to the solar star from the buttes of Coconino.
There, blazing through the century-dried air all that is inhuman in
stellar heat feeds upon the brain, the senses of man, until he staggers
over the sands and falls to death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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