Authors: Ralph Compton
Tags: #West (U.S.) - History, #Western stories, #Westerns, #Fiction, #Superstition Mountains (Ariz.), #Teamsters, #Historical fiction, #General
Skeleton Lode
“Compton writes in the style of popular Western novelists like Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey … thrilling stories of Western legend.”
—
The Huntsville Times
(AL)
ON THE RUN … UNDERGROUND.
They looked over the edge.
“Lord,” said Kelly. “That’s a long way down.”
“You and Kelsey won’t be going down.” Arlo said. “That’ll be up to Dallas and me.”
Kelsey spoke up. “We’ve come this far, and we aren’t about to be left out at the finish.”
“You won’t be,” Arlo reassured her. “But remember what a hell of a time we had following Death’s Head trail to this cave? Well, if that bunch of scoundrels was anywhere in sight, they saw right where we went.”
“Then we’d better move out,” Dallas said. “If Davis and the rest aren’t already searching the tunnels, they soon will be.”
“Let’s hustle, then,” said Arlo. “This may be our last chance to move freely. ’Cause once we find the gold, we’re gonna have to fight to keep it.”
S
KELETON
L
ODE
Ralph Compton
A SIGNET BOOK
SIGNET
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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
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Printing, November 1999
First Printing (Updated Edition), June 2011
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Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 1999
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Jacob Waltz, a German immigrant, came to Arizona Territory in the early 1860s as a homesteader. But farming was as unappealing as it was unrewarding, and Waltz was soon stricken by gold fever. He packed his few belongings and headed into the rattlesnake-infested Superstition Mountains. For two decades the old man and his pack mule roamed the mountains east of Phoenix.
Occasionally Waltz would show up in the little towns to trade gold for supplies. He was often followed by men seeking the source of his gold, but they were never successful. By the late 1880s Waltz was back in Phoenix, and there’s no evidence that he ever returned to his mine. It is suspected that he drew from several caches of gold ore he had hidden. Waltz was later buried under a cotton-wood tree in a cemetery near the state capitol.
Legends about his wealth abound. Some claim that Jacob Waltz had no mine, and that he had found a lost treasure that had once belonged to Jesuits, or that he and another man killed two Mexicans and stole the claim to the mine they were working. Still others believe Waltz’s gold came from the Goldfield Mountains, near the Superstitions, or from the Vulture mine, at Wickenburg. A man named Adolph Ruth, in some of his letters, claimed to have found Waltz’s mine, but somewhere in the Superstitions Ruth disappeared. Later his bones were found, a bullet hole through the skull.
After Jacob Waltz was dead, a box of high-grade ore was discovered under his bed. Tests at the University of Arizona School of Mines later proved that the ore wasn’t
from any known mine in Arizona. After more than a century, there is no record that the mine—now called the Lost Dutchman—was ever found.
In the Superstitions there were no trails, little water, and too damned many Apaches. Men rode the rocky slopes and the desolate canyons seeking gold but finding only death, and those who courted Lady Luck discovered she could be—and usually was—a bitch.
After more than a century, the Superstitions remain as secretive, brooding, and mysterious as ever….
Los Angeles, California, March 15, 1857
“This could be the easiest haul we’ve ever made,” said Arlo Wells. “Three hundred and forty miles back to Phoenix, with the Colorado the only river we have to cross.”
“I wish I was as much of an optimist as you,” said his partner, Dallas Holt. “I don’t aim to even think about all them miles between here and home. Tonight I’m goin’ to sleep in an honest-to-God bed and eat grub we ain’t cooked in a skillet over an open fire. Tomorrow, after our wagons is loaded with that barreled whiskey, I’ll think about the trail ahead.”
Arlo and Dallas had begun punching cows in south Texas while in their teens. Finally, after winning a stake in a poker game, they had ridden west and taken up residence in Tortilla Flat, an undistinguished little town near Phoenix. They had invested their stake in a pair of freight wagons and two teams of mules. For a while, their two-wagon rawhide freight line wasn’t much better than punching cows, with unprofitable short hauls to Tombstone, Yuma, or Tucson. But then their luck seemed to take a turn for the better. The owner of Tortilla Flat’s Gila Saloon, Joel Hankins, engaged them to haul two wagonloads of scotch whiskey from the docks at Los Angeles. The journey west took them twenty-one days.
Morning came all too quickly, and after a breakfast of fried eggs, ham, coffee, and hot biscuits, the Texans got
their teams of mules from the livery and set out for the docks. Each loosed the pucker of his wagon canvas and checked out the load. The whiskey came in fifty-gallon kegs, upright and well loaded. The dock foreman presented Arlo with the bills of lading, which he signed.
“My God,” said Dallas, looking at the bill, “Joel paid near a thousand dollars for these two loads of booze.”
“Bite your tongue,” Arlo replied. “This ain’t just booze. It’s scotch booze, and it’ll go for six bits a shot, even in Tortilla Flat.”
Arlo’s optimism seemed justified, for the return took only twenty-one days, too, and there was no trouble to speak of. The partners breathed a sigh of relief as they approached Phoenix, but even Arlo’s confidence suffered a jolt when they reached Tortilla Flat.