Matthew Roberts
Bronze Member
In 1917 Ray Howland was a young man engaged in the business of painting automobiles in Detroit Michigan. Ray and his wife Elizabeth (Lizzie) rented a small upstairs apartment near downtown Detroit. One evening Ray was reading an article in a magazine titled "Lost Mines of the West." Within a month Ray Howland and his wife had moved from Michigan to Phoenix Arizona where Ray opened a small auto paint shop on Van Buren Street.
Howland planned to search the Superstition Mountains for lost mines and Spanish treasure he believed had been hidden there. By 1924 the Howlands had moved to Mesa to be closer to the Superstitions and Ray again worked his auto paint business on east Main Street.
On July 28, 1927 the Mesa Tribune Journal reported Ray Howland had found the remains of a Spanish corral, crumbled adobe buildings and various Spanish artifacts in the Superstition Mountains. Howland was now making trips into the Superstitions on a regular basis. So much so that he neglected his auto paint business and the bank who had loaned Howland the money to finance it took it back from him in February of 1928. Ray's business which was known as "Howlands Mesa Auto Painting and Duco Service" was taken over by a Los Angeles man, Albert Henderson. Howland and his wife began living on the edge of the Superstition Mountains.
In December of 1930, less than 5 months before Adolph Ruth arrived in Arizona, the Phoenix papers reported Howland had discovered Spanish armor, sword, lance, crossbow and arrows at a place called Castle Rock (Cathedral Rock) in Barkley Basin on the south edge of the Superstitions. Howland also claimed he found a Spanish graveyard near Castle Rock.
In late January of 1931, three months before Adolph Ruth arrived in Arizona, a Los Angeles Times writer Ernest Douglas wrote an article about Howland and his wife Lizzie and their searches in the Superstition Mountains. Several other newspapers picked up the article and printed it. On February 11, 1931 it appeared in the Miami, Oklahoma Daily News Record on page 9. The article was titled, "Hunting 37 Mines."
Here is that article as written by Ernest Douglas:
Hunting 37 Mines
By ERNEST DOUGLAS
Sixteen years ago, Ray Howland was an automobile painter in Detroit. He owned a prosperous business and a comfortable home, had just married. One evening he chanced to read a magazine article entitled "Lost Mines of the West." He jumped up suddenly and yelled across the living room: “Hey, Lizzie, let's go to Arizona and find ourselves a couple of golden mountains."
"All right, Ray," agreed Lizzie, who had been reading the same article. "I can start tomorrow." And that's how Arizona's most picturesque, most persistent, most enthusiastic lost mine hunters got their start in the strange occupation, calling, mania, call it what you please to which they are devoting their active, rigorous, dangerous, but very happy lives. Their business, their hobby, their passion, is to run down the lost mine and buried treasure stories current in Arizona.
From the Grand Canyon to the Mexican border they have roamed, from the Colorado to the Rio Grande. They have driven an abused old car over thousands of desert miles that never before felt a rubber tire. They have prodded reluctant pack burrows over heights so steep and rough and bare that even the wild mountain sheep never range there. And when the going became too hard for the donkeys they still pushed on, on, on. They have faced death in a thousand forms, with heat, thirst, poisoned water, vicious beasts, venomous reptiles, accidents far from human succor to search for ancient antiques that Spaniards and pioneers are supposed to have worked between the days of Coronado and Kit Carson.
There are hundreds of such frontier legends, some written down in histories and others kept alive only by word of mouth where prospectors, cowboys, sheep herders and other desert wanderers gather to spin their farfetched tales. Many are pure fiction, of course. And some are true. The Howland’s know all the lost mine traditions, they have delved into the evidence back of each, and reached the conclusion that 37 are sufficiently well authenticated to deserve investigation. So they are investigating them, this big, grinning, talkative, sunburned optimist and his sturdy, trustful, quieter, no less sunburned and no less optimistic wife-partner.
Two of those 37 desert mysteries have been solved. The Lost Padre Mine, in the Estrella Mountains, and the Lost Burro Placers, in the Eagle Tail Mountains have been rediscovered by the Howland’s and sold for money to carry on their quest for the Lost Dutchman, the most famous, most sought, and probably the richest of all Arizona's mislaid bonanzas.
For four years now they have dropped everything else to comb the rugged, jagged, cruel, weird-looking Superstition range for the Mina Sombrero from which Don Miguel Peralta took many mule loads of gold-laced ore before the Mexican War, which the Apaches spent an entire year in hiding after they had slain 400 of Don Miguel's workers. And which was relocated in the 1880's by two eccentric and ill-fated Germans named Walz and Wiser— never to be seen since by human eye.
Now success is in their grasp, say the Howland’s. The statement that the Lost Dutchman has been ''almost found" by this reformed auto painter and his wife will bring a derisive smile to the face of many an old-timer. It has been "almost found" so many times that its very existence is often questioned by a skeptical new generation. But none of the other seekers had the stick-to-itiveness, the contempt for hardships, of the Howlands. Nor did they have the letters that Jake Wiser wrote to his brother in Michigan.
Soon after their arrival the Howland’s began piecing together every scrap of information they could obtain about the Lost Dutchman. From chiefs and medicine men of the Pima Indians they learned how the Superstitions got their name. The Pimas believe that evil spirits dwell up in the forbidding fastness who will turn to stone any of their tribe who invade the forbidden region. So they have never ventured beyond the utmost foothills. Howland sought out grizzled Apache warriors who in their younger days had accompanied raiding parties, ignorant or scornful of Pima myths. But when he brought up the subject of a gold mine, there was silence.
Silence from all,that is except Old Tom. Tom told of the massacre of 400 Mexican miners. One party had been slain while in route to an arastara, a crude mill on Salt River with a pack train of ore.
Back Howland went to the mountains. Ray found the piles of ore left where the pack sacks had fallen and rotted away. He found bones of humans and mules, remnants of saddles and other gear. He thought he could back track from there to the mine, but he could not. Weeks and weeks he tried, but the goal still eluded him. And Tom would tell no more less he bring down upon himself the fearful Apache curse laid upon any of his people who might lead the hated whites to the yellow stuff they so dearly loved.
Only one Apache ever dreamed of defying that curse. While imprisoned at Florida and later at Fort Sill. Geronimo, their noted war chief, tried to buy his freedom with the secret of the Lost Dutchman. But his jailers set his babblings down as cunning lies concocted by the captive in the hope that he might be taken back to his homeland and there contrive to escape. Gold could be picked up in handfuls where the Mexicans had been surprised and slaughtered, Geronimo said.
But no paleface would ever find the spot unaided, for after throwing the bodies of the victims into the shafts and tunnels, the Apaches worked a whole winter to loosen a section of mountainside and start an immense slide which obliterated every vestige of human activity. They wanted no mining settlements in their country. Geronimo is dead. Tom is dead. Every other Apache who might conceivably point out the location of the Lost Dutchman is dead.
The Howland’s went to Hermosillo, capital of the state of Sonora, to inquire if there had ever been a Don Miguel Peralta with a grant from the king of Spain, 15 miles square, in the center of what is now Arizona. Indeed there had. And somewhere in that grant he had found a mine so rich that one year he paid tithes to the church on an income of 3,000.000 pesos. Approximately a million and a half U. S. dollars. The mine had been called La Mina Sombrero because it was near a slender peak that when viewed from one direction resembled a high-crowned Mexican hat.
That peak was also known as Picacho Aguja or Needle Butte. After the Mexican War and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ceded to the United States all territory north of the Gila River, Don Miguel became alarmed. He did not trust Americanos and had no faith that his grant was valid. Somewhere locked in these rock masses lies gold . . . including the bones of Spanish adventurers massacred by Apaches. Don Miguel did not believe his grant would be recognized by the government at Washington. So he sent in a large company of mineros with instructions to bring out the richest ore with all speed. Only a few survivors got home with news of the massacre. The Mexicans did not again venture into the Superstitions. La Mina Sombrero was abandoned.
For 16 years, Ray Howland and his wife have braved every hardship, running down legends or myths of lost and abandoned treasures in Arizona's mountains, actually finding two of the most famous claims of all in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona.
Scarcely less thrilling was the story of the two Jakes, Walz and Wiser. They must have been real prospectors, those Teutons, for they did find the mina of Don Miguel. Their picks uncovered at least a portion of the ledge one day in 1881. Several times they carried into Florence ore that was "lousy with gold" and threw the village into wild excitement. To inquiries they turned deaf ears.
One evening, after a long shift's 'work, Walz remarked that he "smelt Injuns," and thought he would do a little scouting. Wiser told him to go ahead while he prepared supper in their camp hidden among the jagged rock formations.
Walz was scarcely out of sight before Wiser was attacked by a band of naked warriors. Put on his guard by Walz's hunch, he was not exactly surprised. He made a break, shooting as he went, lost himself among the rocks, outguessed even the wily Apaches, and somehow reached the level desert floor, a wilderness of fierce cacti and thorny bushes. Wiser struck southward toward the Gila River, but was too far gone to make it. Some wandering Pimas found him lying under the pitiless sun, unconscious. The Pimas did not touch him, but notified a man named Walker, an ex-army surgeon who lived on a ranch near Sacaton. Walker went out and brought him in.
From Wiser's clenched hand he took a fragment of quartz that was almost half gold. With all his skill Walker ministered to the unfortunate fugitive. Wiser's mind cleared. He told his rescuer of the mine, the attack, that Walz had certainly been slain. But Wiser's terrible ordeal had been too much for even his iron constitution to withstand. Walker told him that he was going to die, asked if there were relatives to whom he wished to leave any message. "Hell no”, was the reply, “They never done nothin' for me." Before he died, Wiser gave Walker a rudely-drawn map on buckskin. Without the oral directions that accompanied it, the map was worthless.
Only Walker could know the starting point, which features of the range certain marks and notations meant. After the funeral, Walker prepared to lead an expedition in search of the mine. Right there his wife interposed. So Walker gave over his plan, temporarily, he thought. Mrs. Walker never did relent. The matter dragged along until Walker himself died. The map fell into other hands, but the only person capable of interpreting it was gone.
It happened that the Wiser story to the Lost Dutchman saga was the last into which the Howland’s made inquiry. When at last, four years ago, they learned that his name was Jake Wiser, Mrs. Howland exclaimed: "Now that's odd! My mother's father's name was Wiser. And it seems to me that when I was a little girl I heard him mention a brother Jake, who was somewhere out west. I wonder if he could have been this 'Dutchman. She dug into an old trunk. There, among other family heirlooms handed down from her mother, were several letters written by Jake Wiser to her grandfather.
Just what the letters disclosed cannot be told just yet, but the Howland’s admit that they contained information which was indeed illuminating. For one thing they found that they had been ranging too far east for the Lost Dutchman. They, and everyone else, had assumed that the "Sombrero" of Peralta, his Picacho Aguja, was the peak labeled "Sombrero Butte" on modern maps. It was not, it was Weaver's Needle, a mighty column of stone that is the most striking landmark in the northwest corner of the Superstitions. Mysterious writings, the meaning of which no man knows, prehistoric inscriptions found on rocks in the Superstitions.
Wiser’s partner Walz was not dead. He, too, found his way out, made his way to Phoenix. He settled on a little farm where he raised chickens. A big flood inundated Phoenix and his homestead and while he was trying to save his animals he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia and resulted in death.
All these different threads were traced and woven into a comprehensive pattern by the Howland’s. The lost Dutchman took a far stronger hold upon their romantic imaginations than any of the other legends into which they delved. Eventually they returned to take up their pursuit of the greatest prize of all. They explored Moonshine Canyon, Dead Man's Flat, Screaming Squaw Cave, Disappointment Valley, Panther Canyon, Desolation Ridge, ever seeking some sign, some trace.
With renewed confidence they invaded the wilds once more. The search was not over by any means, but with Wiser's hints to guide them they could confine it to a comparatively limited territory. Proof that they were on the right track was soon forthcoming. One day Mrs. Howland picked up a rusted old Mexican spur of a type no Yankee ever wore. Not far away was a man's thigh bone. In the clefts of a Spanish Graveyard, a castellated hillock of fantastically weathered stone atop Skeleton Ridge, they found more bones and implements.
They came upon the remains of corrals and of mining tools so rusty that they dissolved into flakes at a touch. And then, with triumph and untold riches in sight, disaster. One day Howland came to the Place of the Yellow Medicine. He had heard of a spring that the Apaches shunned as deadly, but it did not occur to him that this trickle of clear water was the same. So he drank. Yellow Medicine Spring is full of arsenic. Howland barely made his way back to camp. His wife rigged up a travois of poles and blankets behind one of their burros. Then began a heroic journey over mountains and deserts.
Somehow she got him to Mesa, alive, but no more. There were long weeks in hospital for Ray Howland with his Lizzie ever at his side. Then long months of painfully slow convalescence. Now he is raring to go back. "Probably it'll take a steam shovel to strip off the overburden," he remarked the other day. "But that'll be easy, once we find the spot. It won't be long, eh, Lizzie?" "And then what?" He grinned and consulted a battered notebook. "The Lost Squaw mine next? That's down south of Ajo somewhere, you know. Then we'll take a whirl at the Adams Diggings. And the Dr. Thorne mine, which is on Tonto Creek sure as the devil made sidewinders. After that, the Little Tehochcpi, or maybe the Lost Soldiers mine. -- END --
Over the next 3 years Ray Howland would become involved with the Adolph Ruth mystery. That involvement is a key to understanding what happened to Adolph Ruth, why it happened and who was involved.
Matthew
Howland planned to search the Superstition Mountains for lost mines and Spanish treasure he believed had been hidden there. By 1924 the Howlands had moved to Mesa to be closer to the Superstitions and Ray again worked his auto paint business on east Main Street.
On July 28, 1927 the Mesa Tribune Journal reported Ray Howland had found the remains of a Spanish corral, crumbled adobe buildings and various Spanish artifacts in the Superstition Mountains. Howland was now making trips into the Superstitions on a regular basis. So much so that he neglected his auto paint business and the bank who had loaned Howland the money to finance it took it back from him in February of 1928. Ray's business which was known as "Howlands Mesa Auto Painting and Duco Service" was taken over by a Los Angeles man, Albert Henderson. Howland and his wife began living on the edge of the Superstition Mountains.
In December of 1930, less than 5 months before Adolph Ruth arrived in Arizona, the Phoenix papers reported Howland had discovered Spanish armor, sword, lance, crossbow and arrows at a place called Castle Rock (Cathedral Rock) in Barkley Basin on the south edge of the Superstitions. Howland also claimed he found a Spanish graveyard near Castle Rock.
In late January of 1931, three months before Adolph Ruth arrived in Arizona, a Los Angeles Times writer Ernest Douglas wrote an article about Howland and his wife Lizzie and their searches in the Superstition Mountains. Several other newspapers picked up the article and printed it. On February 11, 1931 it appeared in the Miami, Oklahoma Daily News Record on page 9. The article was titled, "Hunting 37 Mines."
Here is that article as written by Ernest Douglas:
Hunting 37 Mines
By ERNEST DOUGLAS
Sixteen years ago, Ray Howland was an automobile painter in Detroit. He owned a prosperous business and a comfortable home, had just married. One evening he chanced to read a magazine article entitled "Lost Mines of the West." He jumped up suddenly and yelled across the living room: “Hey, Lizzie, let's go to Arizona and find ourselves a couple of golden mountains."
"All right, Ray," agreed Lizzie, who had been reading the same article. "I can start tomorrow." And that's how Arizona's most picturesque, most persistent, most enthusiastic lost mine hunters got their start in the strange occupation, calling, mania, call it what you please to which they are devoting their active, rigorous, dangerous, but very happy lives. Their business, their hobby, their passion, is to run down the lost mine and buried treasure stories current in Arizona.
From the Grand Canyon to the Mexican border they have roamed, from the Colorado to the Rio Grande. They have driven an abused old car over thousands of desert miles that never before felt a rubber tire. They have prodded reluctant pack burrows over heights so steep and rough and bare that even the wild mountain sheep never range there. And when the going became too hard for the donkeys they still pushed on, on, on. They have faced death in a thousand forms, with heat, thirst, poisoned water, vicious beasts, venomous reptiles, accidents far from human succor to search for ancient antiques that Spaniards and pioneers are supposed to have worked between the days of Coronado and Kit Carson.
There are hundreds of such frontier legends, some written down in histories and others kept alive only by word of mouth where prospectors, cowboys, sheep herders and other desert wanderers gather to spin their farfetched tales. Many are pure fiction, of course. And some are true. The Howland’s know all the lost mine traditions, they have delved into the evidence back of each, and reached the conclusion that 37 are sufficiently well authenticated to deserve investigation. So they are investigating them, this big, grinning, talkative, sunburned optimist and his sturdy, trustful, quieter, no less sunburned and no less optimistic wife-partner.
Two of those 37 desert mysteries have been solved. The Lost Padre Mine, in the Estrella Mountains, and the Lost Burro Placers, in the Eagle Tail Mountains have been rediscovered by the Howland’s and sold for money to carry on their quest for the Lost Dutchman, the most famous, most sought, and probably the richest of all Arizona's mislaid bonanzas.
For four years now they have dropped everything else to comb the rugged, jagged, cruel, weird-looking Superstition range for the Mina Sombrero from which Don Miguel Peralta took many mule loads of gold-laced ore before the Mexican War, which the Apaches spent an entire year in hiding after they had slain 400 of Don Miguel's workers. And which was relocated in the 1880's by two eccentric and ill-fated Germans named Walz and Wiser— never to be seen since by human eye.
Now success is in their grasp, say the Howland’s. The statement that the Lost Dutchman has been ''almost found" by this reformed auto painter and his wife will bring a derisive smile to the face of many an old-timer. It has been "almost found" so many times that its very existence is often questioned by a skeptical new generation. But none of the other seekers had the stick-to-itiveness, the contempt for hardships, of the Howlands. Nor did they have the letters that Jake Wiser wrote to his brother in Michigan.
Soon after their arrival the Howland’s began piecing together every scrap of information they could obtain about the Lost Dutchman. From chiefs and medicine men of the Pima Indians they learned how the Superstitions got their name. The Pimas believe that evil spirits dwell up in the forbidding fastness who will turn to stone any of their tribe who invade the forbidden region. So they have never ventured beyond the utmost foothills. Howland sought out grizzled Apache warriors who in their younger days had accompanied raiding parties, ignorant or scornful of Pima myths. But when he brought up the subject of a gold mine, there was silence.
Silence from all,that is except Old Tom. Tom told of the massacre of 400 Mexican miners. One party had been slain while in route to an arastara, a crude mill on Salt River with a pack train of ore.
Back Howland went to the mountains. Ray found the piles of ore left where the pack sacks had fallen and rotted away. He found bones of humans and mules, remnants of saddles and other gear. He thought he could back track from there to the mine, but he could not. Weeks and weeks he tried, but the goal still eluded him. And Tom would tell no more less he bring down upon himself the fearful Apache curse laid upon any of his people who might lead the hated whites to the yellow stuff they so dearly loved.
Only one Apache ever dreamed of defying that curse. While imprisoned at Florida and later at Fort Sill. Geronimo, their noted war chief, tried to buy his freedom with the secret of the Lost Dutchman. But his jailers set his babblings down as cunning lies concocted by the captive in the hope that he might be taken back to his homeland and there contrive to escape. Gold could be picked up in handfuls where the Mexicans had been surprised and slaughtered, Geronimo said.
But no paleface would ever find the spot unaided, for after throwing the bodies of the victims into the shafts and tunnels, the Apaches worked a whole winter to loosen a section of mountainside and start an immense slide which obliterated every vestige of human activity. They wanted no mining settlements in their country. Geronimo is dead. Tom is dead. Every other Apache who might conceivably point out the location of the Lost Dutchman is dead.
The Howland’s went to Hermosillo, capital of the state of Sonora, to inquire if there had ever been a Don Miguel Peralta with a grant from the king of Spain, 15 miles square, in the center of what is now Arizona. Indeed there had. And somewhere in that grant he had found a mine so rich that one year he paid tithes to the church on an income of 3,000.000 pesos. Approximately a million and a half U. S. dollars. The mine had been called La Mina Sombrero because it was near a slender peak that when viewed from one direction resembled a high-crowned Mexican hat.
That peak was also known as Picacho Aguja or Needle Butte. After the Mexican War and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ceded to the United States all territory north of the Gila River, Don Miguel became alarmed. He did not trust Americanos and had no faith that his grant was valid. Somewhere locked in these rock masses lies gold . . . including the bones of Spanish adventurers massacred by Apaches. Don Miguel did not believe his grant would be recognized by the government at Washington. So he sent in a large company of mineros with instructions to bring out the richest ore with all speed. Only a few survivors got home with news of the massacre. The Mexicans did not again venture into the Superstitions. La Mina Sombrero was abandoned.
For 16 years, Ray Howland and his wife have braved every hardship, running down legends or myths of lost and abandoned treasures in Arizona's mountains, actually finding two of the most famous claims of all in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona.
Scarcely less thrilling was the story of the two Jakes, Walz and Wiser. They must have been real prospectors, those Teutons, for they did find the mina of Don Miguel. Their picks uncovered at least a portion of the ledge one day in 1881. Several times they carried into Florence ore that was "lousy with gold" and threw the village into wild excitement. To inquiries they turned deaf ears.
One evening, after a long shift's 'work, Walz remarked that he "smelt Injuns," and thought he would do a little scouting. Wiser told him to go ahead while he prepared supper in their camp hidden among the jagged rock formations.
Walz was scarcely out of sight before Wiser was attacked by a band of naked warriors. Put on his guard by Walz's hunch, he was not exactly surprised. He made a break, shooting as he went, lost himself among the rocks, outguessed even the wily Apaches, and somehow reached the level desert floor, a wilderness of fierce cacti and thorny bushes. Wiser struck southward toward the Gila River, but was too far gone to make it. Some wandering Pimas found him lying under the pitiless sun, unconscious. The Pimas did not touch him, but notified a man named Walker, an ex-army surgeon who lived on a ranch near Sacaton. Walker went out and brought him in.
From Wiser's clenched hand he took a fragment of quartz that was almost half gold. With all his skill Walker ministered to the unfortunate fugitive. Wiser's mind cleared. He told his rescuer of the mine, the attack, that Walz had certainly been slain. But Wiser's terrible ordeal had been too much for even his iron constitution to withstand. Walker told him that he was going to die, asked if there were relatives to whom he wished to leave any message. "Hell no”, was the reply, “They never done nothin' for me." Before he died, Wiser gave Walker a rudely-drawn map on buckskin. Without the oral directions that accompanied it, the map was worthless.
Only Walker could know the starting point, which features of the range certain marks and notations meant. After the funeral, Walker prepared to lead an expedition in search of the mine. Right there his wife interposed. So Walker gave over his plan, temporarily, he thought. Mrs. Walker never did relent. The matter dragged along until Walker himself died. The map fell into other hands, but the only person capable of interpreting it was gone.
It happened that the Wiser story to the Lost Dutchman saga was the last into which the Howland’s made inquiry. When at last, four years ago, they learned that his name was Jake Wiser, Mrs. Howland exclaimed: "Now that's odd! My mother's father's name was Wiser. And it seems to me that when I was a little girl I heard him mention a brother Jake, who was somewhere out west. I wonder if he could have been this 'Dutchman. She dug into an old trunk. There, among other family heirlooms handed down from her mother, were several letters written by Jake Wiser to her grandfather.
Just what the letters disclosed cannot be told just yet, but the Howland’s admit that they contained information which was indeed illuminating. For one thing they found that they had been ranging too far east for the Lost Dutchman. They, and everyone else, had assumed that the "Sombrero" of Peralta, his Picacho Aguja, was the peak labeled "Sombrero Butte" on modern maps. It was not, it was Weaver's Needle, a mighty column of stone that is the most striking landmark in the northwest corner of the Superstitions. Mysterious writings, the meaning of which no man knows, prehistoric inscriptions found on rocks in the Superstitions.
Wiser’s partner Walz was not dead. He, too, found his way out, made his way to Phoenix. He settled on a little farm where he raised chickens. A big flood inundated Phoenix and his homestead and while he was trying to save his animals he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia and resulted in death.
All these different threads were traced and woven into a comprehensive pattern by the Howland’s. The lost Dutchman took a far stronger hold upon their romantic imaginations than any of the other legends into which they delved. Eventually they returned to take up their pursuit of the greatest prize of all. They explored Moonshine Canyon, Dead Man's Flat, Screaming Squaw Cave, Disappointment Valley, Panther Canyon, Desolation Ridge, ever seeking some sign, some trace.
With renewed confidence they invaded the wilds once more. The search was not over by any means, but with Wiser's hints to guide them they could confine it to a comparatively limited territory. Proof that they were on the right track was soon forthcoming. One day Mrs. Howland picked up a rusted old Mexican spur of a type no Yankee ever wore. Not far away was a man's thigh bone. In the clefts of a Spanish Graveyard, a castellated hillock of fantastically weathered stone atop Skeleton Ridge, they found more bones and implements.
They came upon the remains of corrals and of mining tools so rusty that they dissolved into flakes at a touch. And then, with triumph and untold riches in sight, disaster. One day Howland came to the Place of the Yellow Medicine. He had heard of a spring that the Apaches shunned as deadly, but it did not occur to him that this trickle of clear water was the same. So he drank. Yellow Medicine Spring is full of arsenic. Howland barely made his way back to camp. His wife rigged up a travois of poles and blankets behind one of their burros. Then began a heroic journey over mountains and deserts.
Somehow she got him to Mesa, alive, but no more. There were long weeks in hospital for Ray Howland with his Lizzie ever at his side. Then long months of painfully slow convalescence. Now he is raring to go back. "Probably it'll take a steam shovel to strip off the overburden," he remarked the other day. "But that'll be easy, once we find the spot. It won't be long, eh, Lizzie?" "And then what?" He grinned and consulted a battered notebook. "The Lost Squaw mine next? That's down south of Ajo somewhere, you know. Then we'll take a whirl at the Adams Diggings. And the Dr. Thorne mine, which is on Tonto Creek sure as the devil made sidewinders. After that, the Little Tehochcpi, or maybe the Lost Soldiers mine. -- END --
Over the next 3 years Ray Howland would become involved with the Adolph Ruth mystery. That involvement is a key to understanding what happened to Adolph Ruth, why it happened and who was involved.
Matthew
Something else is at play here.
