After going over the mountain (at left) we — Myrtle and I — came down the canyon to the mine. The tunnel dump shows between the two arms of the mountain — about a half mile away. Getting down from the top was tough. I had to back down much of the way — and have a lot of help. Frank had said he would meet us at the mailbox — but he was taking lessons in French off a gramophone and did not show up until we were well along the way to the mine. Frank’s and Edith’s first tent house — part canvas — was built was built on this dump. This, of course, was before Frank had gone East to study political economy. Also it was before he had brought back to the mine a New England school teacher called Edith, bearing his name. There was no laxity after Edith took charge. And, with this touch of “new life” on the job, the mine, besides yielding rich ore, sparingly, produced two fine little girls, Ruth and Helen—girls that grew up at the mine. With their father a graduate of Campbell University, Holton, Kansas, and their mother holding a teacher’s certificate, the girls didn’t fare badly, even in semi-isolation. As a matter of fact, district school was held for a time in their home, with their mother as teacher. The home at this time was a four-room house on a 5-acre water claim—held in connection with the mining claims — on the edge of Mesquite Valley, one mile from the mine. There was a 75-foot dug well, with windmill, and running water in the house. And there were growing fruit trees, a vineyard in bearing, and a green—very green alfalfa patch. The two Williams girls represented two-sevenths of the possible pupils for the school. Then a little green school house was erected not more than three hundred yards from their door—with Miss Leah Lytle as first teacher—where all seven of the miners’ children studied their lessons, romped and played among the sage and mesquite. While so doing, Helen Williams was bitten by a rattlesnake. She was taken to Las Vegas, the nearest big town, fifty miles away for treatment—and that move spelled the end of the little green school house in the Mesquite Valley so far as the two girls were concerned. They finished their schooling in Las Vegas, graduating from the high school there. Then, when Rex Ewing, Frank William’s closest mining neighbor, moved to Las Vegas to capture some of the prevailing high wages, the school blew up. Rex had supplied the other five pupils. The sequence of events as set down here may be faulty—but were I able to chronicle them in order, the result would be the same.