A Prospector's Christmas Story
copyright 1999 G.M. "DOC" Lousignont, Ph.D.
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Part 5 of 6
He had that last mile hike down to a science. In fact he sort of liked to do a fast walk, it was great exercise. That cart would slow him down a bit. However, it would come in handy. He usually used his big back pack to lug stuff up to the cabin when he was going for a long weekend, but this was different. He wasn’t going just for a visit; this was where he'd be hangin' his buckskin gold pouch from now on.He recalled a couple of years back when it was one of those summers in the high desert that just made it unbearable to detect the local haunts. He didn’t know why they called it the high desert, it was only about 2100 feet above sea level. But that particular summer they were experiencing days when it was 109 degrees in the shade!
Sam took to the air conditioned comfort of the public library to start looking for an area with a little higher elevation and a little lower temperatures. He had studied some old maps, and did quite a bit of reading when he happened across an area that looked just about right. It was about a five to five and a half hour drive away, but he would soon learn that when it was 109 in the high desert, it could be anywhere from 75 to 89 degrees up there at 7200 feet in the Techatticup mountains where the little sleepy town of Good Hope was nestled among the tall timbers. That's how he came to learn about Good Hope.
He thought about the first trip he had ever made to that area. After about four and a half hours of driving things sure started to look different. Gone were the cactus, and the desert flat lands and tumble weeds. They had been replaced by green carpets of vegetation and beautiful mountain flowers growing alongside the highway and so many mountains that you couldn’t tell where one started and the other stopped. The glorious smell of pine and fresh air was a index aroma. It had been a long time since he had taken a breath of air that didn’t smell of automobile exhaust.
He looked at the road laid out in front of him. It looked like a long sleepy snake just basking in the glow of a sun drenched day. He didn’t ever recall the sky being such a stunning shade of blue. Off in the distance, with the mountains as a backdrop, he could see majestic pine trees as they stretched skyward, some of them just barely tickling the bottom of fluffy cotton like clouds that laid lazily around the mountains. He recalled that the mountains were so high they were actually above the clouds. Who was the reclusive artist that had painted this magnificent landscape, because surely it was a painting, it couldn’t be real.
The difference in the temperature between his home in the booming suburb of Desert Rose and the mountains soon became apparent when he realized that it was too cold with the air conditioner on in his car. He turned it off and opened all the windows and like a crazy high school kid he put the pedal to the metal and headed for Good Hope while he sang at the top of his voice, John Denver’s song, Rocky Mountain High. Well at least he sang what he knew of it, the part about "Rocky Mountain High, Colorado…" the rest of the tune was filled in with enthusiastic la, la, la’s. There was only one song that Sam knew all the words to by heart; "Through the Years" by Kenny Rogers; that was "their" song.
As he slowly passed through the little town of Good Hope he wondered what it would be like to live in such a beautiful secluded place. They had to be at least seventy miles from anything that even resembled a big city. But it seemed like they had what they needed to get by. He noticed an old two story building that said General Store. In the window was also a sign that said Post Office. There was a little café called Mabel’s, and a gas station that looked more like a house with one antique pump sitting in the driveway. But, there was a sign that said "GAS - Open for Business." And there was even a little church. The one thing he didn’t notice was a police station. Why heck, people there probably didn’t even have locks on their doors.
A little outside the town of Good Hope he pulled off the road and consulted his map. By golly he may not have found much gold, not yet anyway, but he had plenty of maps. Why the back of his pickup truck looked like he was a traveling salesman for Rand McNally. There it was, the place he had highlighted. There was a string of five locations on the map indicating mines and he had figured out the approximate GPS locations. He entered the coordinates into his GPS and was pleased to see that he was only a couple of miles away. At least he must be looking at the right map.
He found the mines he was looking for that first trip, but not much else. There was a lot of trash, and old worthless artifacts, but his metal detector never did sound off on anything that ended up even being remotely related to gold. But you know, that was OK. He fell in love with that place. It was quiet, and peaceful, and untarnished by modern day man. He took a lot of pictures on that first trip. Maybe if he had swung more and snapped less he would have found some yellow metal.
Over the next three months he had gone back up there again on two occasions. He’d always try to make at least a three day trip out of it. He’d just sleep in the back of his pickup truck, and cook on his little Coleman 2 burner stove. He wasn’t finding any gold, but he was sure enjoying the wildlife and the scenery. There was just something that kept tugging at him to go back again.
In early September when he told Mary he was thinking about heading out again, she asked in passing, "How is it you go on these three day gold hunting expeditions but I never see any gold? If it wasn’t for the fact that you come home with so many dirty clothes and you smell like you been wrestling goats I’d think you had a woman on the side. But then I always tell myself who the heck would want an old fart like you anyway, besides me?" And she’d laugh that laugh of hers, the one that was music to Sam’s ears. All the heavenly choirs of Angels and Saints singing couldn’t make Sam’s heart skip a beat like Mary’s laughter.
Sam thought perhaps this time he should be a little more persistent in his quest and try to bring home something sort of nuggety, just to show Mary that he wasn't all smoke and mirrors. After all, he didn’t want her to think he was leaving town just to get away from her, because nothing could have been further from the truth. So on this trip he decided that when he would get into Good Hope he’d stop at the General Store and have a chat with the keeper and maybe some of the locals.
That was the day he met Billy Beaumont and his wife Ethel who had a nine year old daughter Peggy. Billy was a descendent from one of the original miners that worked that area back in 1863. His family had always ran the general store in Good Hope, and Billy inherited the business when his daddy had passed away some 8 years earlier.
It was a nice little store. There was a little bit of everything. Canned goods, soda, over the counter medications, and a little section of the store dedicated to hardware. When Sam first entered the store Billy met him with a "Howdy Stranger." Sam gave him a big smile, and returned a greeting, "Hi, there! My name is Sam, Sam Lewis, I live about 5 hours away in Desert Rose, outside of Nelson. I been coming up here for the past few months and camping out. It sure is glorious up here." Sam was eager to put Billy’s mind at ease as he figured they probably didn’t get many strangers up in those parts and they might be a bit suspicious of a man all by himself.
"Yeah, we like it. It ain’t got all the modern conveniences like you probably do in Desert Rose, but we ain’t got all the modern problems up here either." Sam continued, "Well heck, it’s good to know you have such a well supplied little store here because I’ll just start buying my canned goods here when I come up to these parts instead of down in Desert Rose."
"Well we’re always happy to index a new customer, by the way excuse my manners, my name is Billy Beaumont, and that pretty lady over there stocking shelves is my wife Ethel. Ethel, say hi to Sam, he’s from Desert Rose, he comes up here camping." "Nice to meet you Sam." said Ethel, without losing her rhythm of can from box to shelf.
Sam had accomplished what he had hoped for, in a few short minutes he had been transformed from a stranger to a new customer.
Sam picked up a few items, a tank of propane, a liter of Pepsi; things he could use but didn’t necessarily need right then. However, he wanted to show good faith.
As he approached the counter Billy said, "Will that be all for you Mr. Lewis." "Not quite." said Sam. "What else do you need?" "Well I need for you to call me Sam! Mr. Lewis makes me feel old, and as you can see I’m old enough already." "You got it Sam!" Just then something caught Sam’s eye inside the glass counter case. "Wow, what’s that little baby down there?" "Sam, that is a Diatonics Meisterklasse Harmonica with all metal reeds. Do you play?" "No, I’ve always wanted to learn. My dad used to play a harmonica like you wouldn’t believe." "Well Sam there’s no time like the present. I’ll tell you what, this Harmonica retails for $79.95 but I can let you have it for $65 out the door, can you swing that?" "Sounds like a good deal to me! Wrap it up. Any free lessons come with that?" "Sam if you need any help you let me know, but most of the best harmonica players I know picked it up all on their own, it’s easy, it just takes practice."
"By the way, if there is ever anything you need that we don’t have we can usually get it for you by the next day. We just have to call our supplier down in Beaverville. Being a small store we can’t stock everything. But we’ve ordered just about everything over the years from wheel barrows, to pregnancy test kits."
"BILLY BEAUMONT! What did you say?" asked his wife in a demanding tone? "Oh nothing important dear I was just telling Sam that our neighbor’s cat was PREGNANT and had KITTENS." Billy winked at Sam, "My wife’s a bit of a prude. That’s what happens when you marry the preacher’s daughter." "Oh you got one of them prudes too? Maybe your wife knows my wife, Mary." They both laughed.
"Say Billy, I don’t suppose you could help me with some information." "Well I will if I can." "Well I got a sort of crazy hobby, and I’m always sort of reluctant to talk about it because some folks think it’s sort of neat and other people just think I’m plain nuts. But a few years back I started metal detecting looking for gold. I do some panning and sluicing, I’m not going to get rich off of it, but it’s a fun hobby and it keeps an old retired coot like me out of trouble and out of the cemetery. I’ve been looking around these parts for the past couple of months but I’m sort of reluctant to wander or explore too far because I don’t want to trespass on anyone’s property and I don’t want folks getting mad at me. I just sorta’ don’t want to be in anyone’s way or be any trouble. You folks seem to have a quiet little place up here and I don’t want to do anything to disrupt it."
"Well Sam you must have done your homework because way way back this was one heck of an area for gold. I’m a descendant of one of the original prospectors. Somewhere upstairs where we live I’ve got a family tree. My daddy left me an old chest with all kinds of hand drawn maps and stuff. We usually don’t like to talk about this stuff because we don’t want to be invaded by a thousand city folk up here tearing up the country side looking for the Mother Lode."
"Billy I know exactly what you mean and one of the reasons I like it up here is because it’s so nice and quiet. I don’t want that either and believe me, I haven’t told anyone about this place except my wife, and I’m not going to."
"Well Sam, based on those assurances, maybe I can give you some help, but only under one condition?" "What’s that?" Sam thought to himself, well how much is this going to cost me? "If you do find any gold can you let me buy some to put in my case to sell. I mean it don’t look good for this to be an old mining town and we don’t even have a few speck of gold to sell to the few tourists we get through here. Every month during vacation season we get a tour bus that comes through, usually filled with Asians. Those folks will buy anything that even remotely looks like a souvenir. A year ago I had one fella that offered me $250 for a pair of deer antlers that was hanging up on the wall from a buck I had shot." "Whadya’ do?" Sam inquired. "Hey you don’t see no deer antlers on the wall do ya’?" "No I sure don’t!"
"Sam they invade this place like bees taking to a new hive. Click, click, click, camera flashes going off all over the place, I swear I’m going to get retina damage. What in the hell is so interesting in this place that they have to take pictures of? Why I bet Ethel and me have had our pictures taken 10,000 times. They make you feel like a movie star or something. They want to stand with you and put their arm around your shoulder while the other one takes a picture, then they trade places. Click, click, click, damndest thing I ever did see. But hey, they spend money! And they’re nice and very enthusiastic. They make me laugh though, the way they talk, "Oh you hava vely nice store, I take picture now OK? OK! Click click, click. They crack me up!" "BILLY BEAUMONT, you’re not cussing again are you?" "No dear, I was just asking Sam if he’d ever seen Ten Mile Creek Dam."
"Sam I’m sorry back to this gold hunting of yours." "Well first Billy, let me tell ya’ if you steer me in the right direction, I’ll be happy to let you buy a few pieces. I have to take some home to my wife though, just so she knows I’m making this silly hobby of mine pay off!" "Hey it sounds like a deal to me. So first tell me where you have been going?"
"Well you know about 2 miles North of here up in the mountains to the East there are those five old mines." "Yeah, sure do, it’s the Lucky Boy, Golden Lady, Timberland, Jubilee, and the Mulberry; we used to play in them all the time when he were kids."
"Well that’s where I've been goin'." "Well Sam I’m going to have to get into that old trunk of dad’s and pull out some of those old maps to probably be of any real help, but I can tell you this much. When I was about twelve Dad and I would always go about four miles outside of town. On the West side of the road, off in the timber about a mile or so there are all kinds of little streams and creeks. That’s where we used to always go and pan for gold. We never found anything very big, a few pickers now and then, but mostly it was just something for dad and me to do when we weren’t hunting. So, I don’t know if that gives you any kind of help or not, but I just know that Dad used to say you could find free gold on the West side of the road. When I was little I never quite understood what he meant. I thought he meant if you found gold on the East side of the road you had to pay somebody for it, but on the West side it was free. Listen you don’t have a CB radio in your vehicle do ya'?" "Sure do." "Well Sam check back with me on Channel 14 tomorrow, we always monitor Channel 14 here, and I’ll look through the trunk tonight and see if I find anything that looks like it might help you."
"Hey Billy, already you’ve helped a lot, I don’t want to have to pay for any gold I find so I better get my ass, whoops did your wife hear me? I’d better get my hindquarters over on the West side of the road where all the FREE gold is!"
"Good plan Sam, hey listen I enjoyed meeting you and talking, don’t be a stranger." "Don’t worry about that Billy, I think this will be the beginning of a little partnership. You tell me where to go, I’ll go there find some gold, and you buy it, and sell it and make a profit. Sounds like a win win situation to me!"
"Take care Sam!" "You too Billy. "Nice meeting you Ethel!" Sam stuck his new harmonica in his pocket and put the Pepsi and propane on the floor of his truck. He thought to himself, "That was a mighty productive stop you made there Mr. Lewis!"
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