Education of a Wandering Man

by Louis L'Amour

  He named an attorney who had some claims and usually hired his work done, so when the bus reached Barstow, I got off. The attorney, whom I saw the next day, needed no work done, but he called an old man he knew who had claims and I made the connection.

  He would drive me to the claims and show me what needed to be done and, if all went well, would return and pick me up. If not, there was an old Model T there I could drive back to Barstow. “Ain’t much of a road,” he explained, “just wheel-tracks, but you stick to it an’ it will bring you right into town. Don’t be misled by signs. Most of them just go to abandoned mines, or towns that ain’t there anymore.

  “The claims are in the Owl’s Head Mountains, just over the ridge from Wingate Pass, to the south of Death Valley. Country’s mighty dry out that away but there’s springs if you know where to find ’em.”

  He glanced at me out of the corners of his eyes. “You upset by rattlers, boy? There’s a-plenty of them out there—ketched a sight of them in rattraps. They crawl around at night, y’know.

  “Never had no trouble with ’em myself. All a man’s got to do is keep his eyes open. An’ when you get up in the mornin’, shake out your boots before you put ’em on. That’s not for snakes. Centipedes, scorpions, tarantulas, and the like, they favor warm boots.”

  He drove on, winding along the sandy desert road. “There’s two claims. Two hundred dollars. You will need the grub I got back here, fifty dollars’ worth, an’ I’ll deeduct for that.

  “Ain’t likely you’ll see anybody. That there’s mighty barren, empty country, but if you do, just tell ’em you’re workin’ for me. Ever’body out thataway knows me.

  “Owl Holes will be your closest water unless there’s been rain. Brackish, but you can drink it. They’re kind of south of the claims, maybe a mile or two, but I keep a barrel of water on the claim.”

  He indicated the trail we were driving. “This here road leads straight into town, like I said. Don’t you go wanderin’ off. Old mines out yonder where nobody’s been in years—deathtraps, most of them.

  “Over east a ways, in the Ivanpahs now, used to be some horse thieves yonder. May be there yet. I ain’t lost nothin’ there so I ain’t looked, but they were bad ones, right bad.

  “Mostly pick an’ shovel work where we’re goin’. Got some giant out there, giant powder, y’ know. Never used it much, myself. You dig into the hillside where the tunnel is, an’ you fix up the road. I won’t ask anything more.”

  “What have you got out there?”

  “Manganese. I don’t have much know-how about anything but gold or silver, but there’s a good prospect nigh to the Owl Holes. That’s manganese, and an engineer I helped one time, he showed me this place where you’re goin’. Lay claim to it, he said, an’ hang on. Next time there’s a war you’ll be rich. Well, I’m hangin’ on, but where’s the war? Folks are just too darn peaceful these days.”

  He drove on in silence. Then he slowed for a dip in the road, scooted around a big rock that had been easier to avoid than move, and he said, “This here claim? She’s cost me six, seven hundred dollars so far, but I sold a gold claim over on Caliente Canyon for four thousand here a while back. Sell one once in a while.”

  “Ever think of working one yourself?”

  “Work one? Hell, no, I find ’em. Takes money to turn a claim into a producer. Takes money, hope, an’ faith, and I got none of them. I find myself a hole in the ground, some likely-lookin’ ore, and I act kind of mysterious. I make sure any rock I show is good stuff, an’ never tell where it comes from. If they’re interested, I show ’em the hole and spec’late how there’s millions in the hole, an’ maybe there is if I can sell it for enough.”

  “Isn’t that dishonest?”

  “Maybe. I ain’t a judge, anymore. Seems to me folks want something to hope for. They want to believe in something. Well, I give them hope, an’ if they believe enough they have faith. What more can a man get out of life? Anyway, who knows? They might strike it rich.”

  “This claim we’re going to now—is it one of those?”

  “Not by a durned sight. This one is my hope, an’ my faith. I got no faith in gold. I got no faith in silver. Manganese, that’s a serious metal. I got faith in manganese.”

  It was a winding desert road, a good enough surface but with sandy stretches. The mountains were bare rock and when rain fell upon them it ran down into the sand and was lost. The area we crossed was scattered with dry lakes, or playas, as they are called, and along the alluvial fans there were scattered large boulders, gravel, and sand. The predominant plant was the creosote bush. From the air, or from high on a mountain, this plant can look to the uninitiated like an orchard, its growth is so regularly spaced. The struggle for what water falls is so great that the creosote roots poison any but a few plants that try to grow near it. This accounts for the open spaces around each creosote bush.

  “See you got books along. Good idea. You do your work early, boy, or in the evenin’. Nobody in his right mind works in the noonday sun. You travel in the desert, you travel early an’ late.

  “Everything out there”—he gestured toward the desert—“is there because it learned how to survive. Lots of plants have hard surfaces on the top of the leaves, to reflect sunlight. Cactus grows with kinda fluted sides so’s not to expose too much surface to the sun at one time.

  “Kangaroo rats, now? They maybe never take a drink their life long. They get what moisture they need from what they eat.”

  He took a hand from the wheel to point off to our left. “Spring over yonder. Sets in a kind of box. Warm water, but good. You can drink it anytime.

  “Paradise Spring, they call it. Named for a mine back yonder. I sure enough hope whoever found it found paradise, because from what I hear he didn’t find much else. Some float, maybe.

  “But that’s just talk. I never worked that hole, know durned little about it.

  “Ever hear of Shorty Harris? Folks always askin’ about Death Valley Scotty. Know him well. He’d make three of Shorty Harris but wasn’t half the man. Oh, Scotty was all right. Liked him. Shorty, he was kind of special. Didn’t have an enemy in the world except hisself. Shorty had a nose for the rich stuff. He could find it better ’n anybody but, once he got some of it, drank and gambled until nothing was left.

  “Then he’d get his old burro and head for the desert again. One time, Greenwater, I think it was, in Death Valley. Shorty and his partner found gold—gold so rich they could scarce believe it. Shorty, he would stake their claims and his partner would go to town and file on them.

  “I know! You guessed it! Shorty’s partner gets to town and he’s thirsty. Also he’s a talker. He gets a couple of belts of cactus juice and tells ever’body in the saloon what they found. They buy him drinks, get him drunk, he passes out and forgets to file, and all those men, they come streamin’ out there, filin’ on all the ground in sight. Shorty winds up with nothin’! Nothin’ at all.”

  The old man swerved his car around a sand hill, dropped, bouncing, into a wash, and made a desperate dash up the other side, bouncing over rocks and dodging a near collision with an invading bunch of creosote.

  “Shorty was a finder, not a keeper. Come from back east somewhere, New Jersey, I think it was, an’ hoboed his way west when he was a youngster.

  “Orphan. Least, that’s what I heard. Died a few years back an’ if what they say is true, he was buried standin’ up in the lowest part of Death Valley.

  “They were diggin’ a grave but it was just too durned hot, so they stood the coffin on one end and filled it in. Buried him standin’ up at the lowest part of Death Valley. Ol’ Shorty would have loved that. Had his epitaph: Here lies Shorty Harris, single-blanket jackass prospector, or something like that. Never seen the spot, m’self.”

  We stopped at Garlic Spring to fill the radiator from a water trough. The spring itself was about a hundred yards up the draw, and when we started on I was telling myself that if I had to drive back alone I would hope the
tire tracks would still be there, as roads or trails intersected with our road every mile or so.

  The old man talked steadily, but everything he had to say was amusing or informative. He knew a lot about desert plants and talked of them. We were climbing slowly, headed for the Granite Mountains with the Avawatz showing up behind them.

  It was all of seventy miles to the claim, and as much attention as I paid, I was to wish I had looked around still more.

  The claim was nothing. Somebody had opened a tunnel and dug in a few feet. Some flimsy poles had been stuck in the ground and they supported a few sheets of metal that offered a little shade. There were a couple of barrels underneath, one containing water. There were several picks, a shovel, a single-jack, and some drills.

  An old Model T with no top stood under the shed. “If something happens an’ I don’t get back in five days, you just wind up that ol’ buggy an’ drive her into town. Come to my place an’ I’ll pay you off.

  “Work in the tunnel, yonder. Get in as far as you can in the time you’ve got, but if you run out of something to do of an evenin’ you might walk back along the road an’ roll some of those big rocks away.”

  He looked at me again, as if seeing me for the first time. “Think you can do it, boy?”

  “No problem,” I said, and meant it.

  He let out the clutch and rolled away, making a quick turn to dodge a big rock. That was another case where I should have been paying more attention.

  For a long time I just stood there, listening to the sound of the car for as long as I could hear it. He was an old man. Suppose he didn’t make it back to Barstow?

  Picking up my duffel, I walked back under the awning. It was late afternoon and the sun was under some rare clouds, very thin, very high.

  There was a fire-ring of rocks and some piled wood alongside it. There was a coffeepot, a frying pan, some odds and ends of knives, forks, and enamel dishes. And suspended under the awning was a hammock.

  I suppose I was lonely. I know that often I longed for someone with whom I could talk of books, writers, and things of the mind, but that was not to be for a long time, except here and there when I chanced on some other lost literary soul. Loneliness is of many kinds, and the mere presence and companionship of people does not suffice. The people I had been meeting were friendly, pleasant, and the salt of the earth, but they did not speak my language. I enjoyed them, but something in me reached out for more. Moreover, I needed time to write, to sit down, free of care, and just write. So far I had been trying, here and there—aboard ship, at the mine, and elsewhere—but I needed more.

  One is not, by decision, just a writer. One becomes a writer by writing, by shaping thoughts into the proper or improper words, depending on the subject, and by doing it constantly. There was so much I needed to learn that could only be learned by doing, by sitting down with a typewriter or a pen and simply writing. Most young writers waste at least three paragraphs and often three pages writing about their story rather than telling it. This was one of the many things I had yet to learn.

  Behind every great piece of art, be it music, sculpture, poetry, architecture, painting, or literature, there is design, and so there must be, although every once in a while one will discover some critic speaking of a “formula” story, as if there were any other kind. In some stories it is not so easily discernible, but the design is there, and so it should be, as our predecessor Will Shakespeare knew so very well.

  Too many books are written about writing by those who are not writers. Recently I read a book on how a certain great dramatist arrived at his dialogue, an account that would be amusing to any professional writer, it was so little based in fact.

  Fortunately, I had slept in a hammock before this, so I managed very well. It at least kept me off the ground where I might awaken with a rattlesnake alongside me for warmth. As it was, two mornings later I shook a four-inch scorpion out of my boot.

  The work before me was just what I had done before, although the ground in which I worked was softer, and also, I might add, dangerous as one penetrated deeper. Whoever followed me would need to use timber. As it was, I cut quite a bit from the hillside and then turned to the road, where much work needed to be done.

  On the fourth day I had completed my work, yet I waited through the fifth, puttering about, straightening up, gathering the tools and gear together.

  Having lost most of what I owned when my gear was taken from the bus, I had but two books. They had been left on the seat when I went into the café with the others, and the thieves had not been interested. One was Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome; the other, Donn Byrne’s Messer Marco Polo.

  The first I had read on the two evenings after work when I first arrived. Now I completed Byrne’s book, and when morning came I tossed my few belongings into the back of the old Model T.

  Surprisingly, it started easily. I had wrestled with a crank before that, and had seen others do it, and expected trouble.

  It started easily. The trouble came later.

  BUT NOT MUCH LATER. In driving away, the old man had made a quick turn to get around a rock, and that was what I should have remembered. At the last minute I did, but too late. The car went over the rock, dropped hard, and something broke.

  The car would not move. I got out, walked around, and it was obvious even to me. The axle was broken, and the old Model T was going nowhere. I turned off the ignition, picked up my bundle from the car seat, and looked around.

  It was not yet five o’clock in the morning, and I would be getting nowhere standing about bemoaning my luck. I had no canteen, no way in which to carry water. There was a can of pears left, so I put it in my bundle and started south. The first water would be at the Owl Holes roughly four miles from the claim.

  Shouldering my bundle, I started off, walking steadily. That I was in trouble I had no doubt, but if the old man was coming for me, he would be driving right along the road by which we came in.

  The air was still cool, but the day would be hot. I must begin looking for shade, a place to take shelter from the midday sun. Physically I was in good shape and had always done a lot of walking, so that part did not distress me. It was the lack of water that was important.

  The road by which I had come trended southwest, then turned sharply back to the southeast, as I recalled. Among the springs mentioned on the way in, the old man had spoken of Drinkwater Spring, which was off the trail to the south, and there was a foot trail that led from there to the road by which we had come. If I dared chance it, that cutoff might save me several miles.

  Near Drinkwater Spring there was an old cabin, so it might be a place to stop during the worst of the day’s heat. My walking pace was roughly three miles an hour, and after a good long drink at the Owl Holes, I started down that road to the southwest, walking steadily.

  It was a few minutes after six when I left the Owl Holes. I was guessing I could continue walking until ten o’clock, when it would be wise to find shade, if any, and wait out the day. In walking west I knew I would be walking parallel to the road that ran east, but cutting across country is dangerous, as one has no idea how many gullies one will have to climb into and out of. I held to the trail and the tracks of the old man’s car.

  It was flat desert, scattered with rocks and creosote. When I reached the turning point, I was feeling good and checked my time. The sky above was impossibly blue but that would not be for long. Soon the heat would turn it to brassy white and the sand beneath my feet would grow hot. I knew that temperatures at this time of year could run well over one hundred degrees in the shade, and there was no shade.

  I did not worry. I did not think. I simply walked, putting one foot ahead of the other and holding my destination in mind.

  Soon I would have the Granite Mountains to my south and the Avawatz to the north, both well back from the road on which I walked. The tracks of the old man’s car, coming and going, were plainly visible. There were no other tracks.

  Desert nights are cold, but with th
e coming of day the cold disappears quickly and the heat is with you until sundown.

  My shirt was soaked with sweat from walking but it had a pleasant, cooling effect. At the point where I must turn to the footpath that led to Drinkwater Spring, I hesitated. Leaving a known road is always a risk, and moreover, if the old man was driving out today, he might well pass by while I was off the road. Nevertheless, the water was there and I needed water, desperately. As near as I could figure, the cutoff must be eight or nine miles until it intersected with the road on which I was traveling.

  My situation was serious. I had no means by which to carry water, and irritably I thought back to so many movies where, when a canteen is empty, it is thrown away. I can think of nothing more incredibly stupid. If the man comes upon water, how will he carry it? Yet the scene is repeated over and over.

  It was after eleven before I reached water. It was a small pipe leading from the spring to a trough in an old corral. Cupping my hands, I drank, and drank again. Then I splashed water on my face and on my shirt. The old cabin was not far off and I walked over, dropping down in the shade.

  Grateful for the respite, I leaned my head back and slept. It was all of an hour before I awakened, and then only to move into deeper shade. After a bit I walked to the pipe from the spring and soaked up some more water.

  Some blue quail came out of the brush and gathered around water trickling from the trough, and later a jack rabbit hopped slowly by, unaware of me, and obviously unafraid.

  I slept again, awakened, drank, then dozed for a while. From time to time I glanced at my watch. I would wait until four, I told myself. If possible, I wanted to be back on the familiar road while it was still light. Otherwise I might miss it entirely.

  At a rough guess I had covered something more than twenty miles that morning, but the worst stretch would be at the end.

  Thinking of that, I bathed my feet in cool water from the trough, dried them, and prepared myself to move out. I had far to go and was impatient to get on with it. Despite that fact, I enjoyed my brief stop at Drinkwater Spring, and am sure had I stopped the night I would have seen some bighorns, for their tracks were all about. Obviously they watered here.