Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas
John Locke · en
Elwood told me that when he had come to the by-road leading through the
canyon past his nephew’s location, he naturally thought of Frank, and
as he drove on toward Crescent he began to think he should have gone
the other road. He said, “Something told me to turn around—I wouldn’t
pretend to say what it was—but it was so strong, so insistent, that I
did turn around after I had gone a mile.” He found Frank still hollering
for help—but his calls were now very feeble. With the help of the two
miners Frank had been trying to attract, Elwood got him out from under
the boulder, loaded him into the wagon, and drove on down through the
canyon and across the big flat to Nipton, the railroad station. Frank
was put on the train and taken to a hospital in Los Angeles. He was
paralyzed from the waist down. Six weeks in the hospital fixed him up as
good as ever. Frank was on his own then—that is, had no insurance.
The expense was terrific. I think Frank never did get his curiosity
satisfied about the boulder.
As his inactive partner, I cautioned Frank against working alone in
those remote places—but it did no good. He said he was safer working
alone in the mines than I was when riding the trains between Kansas
and Nevada. When I first went into the mining country, I observed that
practically all prospectors had partners. I asked an Irishman (a miner)
why was it so? He said, “And how the divvel would a man pull his-self up
out of a hole widout a partner?” But there was a more important
reason. It was for protection against accidents such as Frank had just
experienced.
Frank’s second accident, more serious than the other one, was at our
Goodsprings mine, while loading out vanadium ore on Government contract,
in more recent years. He was unable to tell how it happened. The trucker
had left with a 5-ton load, and Frank was “waiting around” for him to
come back for a second load. When the truck driver got back from his
ten-mile trip over the mountain, he found Frank wandering around down on
the road below the ore bin, in a dazed condition—really worse than that.
Frank wrote me later that he remembered standing on the ore bin after
the trucker had gone with his load, and thought he must have fallen
off—but remembered nothing more. The ore bin is built against the slope
of the mountain, having a flat top about 16x20 feet, on a level of the
tunnel, with car-track extending to the outer edge, where a drop would
be about 18 feet—and less, (to nothing), at the upper end of the ore
bin. Frank did not say where he was standing in the last moments of
consciousness—but a fall from anywhere near the upper edge would mean a
rough tumble all the way down to the road.
When Frank was taken to the Las Vegas hospital, it was found he had
a broken collarbone, a bad head injury — and a touch of pneumonia. He
remained two months in the hospital, at state expense, plus $90 per
month compensation — with final payment of $1,500, on a basis of
one-fourth incapacitation.