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they stumbled on a large deposit of to comment that maybe the gold was as mass of cattle of about 400 head. I could
yellowish sand and gravel. Thinking they good as the music, at that. see Bob's head and shoulders as he
had just made the largest strike in The Bummer Hill affair died out as fought to get through, then he disap-
history, the gents grabbed up all they a major problem when the Territorial peared. I feared his horse had gone
could carry and headed for the nearest Legislature passed laws providing for a down, but Bob came up again and there
saloon to celebrate. prison sentence for the possession o_t bum was Harol under his arm.
A saloonkeeper almost took some of gold, and the courts backed up tne in- As the Indian worked his way out of
the stuff, in fact he even had. some on tent of the law with liberal interpreta- the herd and came toward me, all I
his scales, and possibly a less experienced tions. could do was to stand there and cry.
man would have accepted it. Then he Honesty among mining camp denizens I walked back to the house beside them
declined, saying something about the wasn't considered a particular virtue, but holding on to his stirrup. He tried to ex-
amount of the "dust" it took to weigh prudence was. And possession of yellow plain to us that no animal was worth the
up. He sent the miners to the assay of- sand, gold covered lead, or any of the life of one little boy. I wish that I could
fice in Placerville. They came back crest- other fraudulent materials; became im- tell it in the words that he used but I
fallen. prudent, to say the very least. The Bum- cannot. Yet he made us understand that
The yellowish sand and gravel looked mer Hill hoax was over. we should be willing to give our best to
a little like gold, and it was heavy. It protect our property, but should not give
just didn't happen to have value. The CATTLE AND KIDS our lives.
yellow sand became known as "Bummer By S. E. (Ed) Bogart Bob was a wonderful man and many
Hill Dust" in honor of the unfortunate WHEN I was just a boy, almost sixty were the lessons he taught Harol and
fellows who made the original find. ~ years ago, we lived on a homestead me that helped us through the years.
After that, with men and money be- Some time the next day he found our
ing what they are, and mining camp inside a large cattle ranch in northwest- cow and brought her back to us. And
ern Kansas. One of the jobs that I and
morals being no better than they had to my little brother, who was only seven at the next spring she had a little black
be, it was only a matter of time until calf which was the pride and joy of my
Boise Basin's more enterprising gentry the time, had was to draw water from brother. Kids don't worry long about
were mixing the sa-nd of Bummer Hill a well which was located about 100 yards narrow escapes, and when I think back,
west of the house in a draw. We could
with a little of the real thing and pass- not see the house from the well. It was it was just one more of the good times
ing it off on unsuspecting gamblers and we had there on the old homestead.
barkeeps. no little job for us, as I was only eleven
at the time and the well was 105 feet
When blended in proper proportions, deep and cased with six-inch galvanized The Boom Days of Staging
Bummer Hill Dust couldn't be detected casing. The bucket was of four-inch cas- (Continued from page 24)
by the naked eye. The only place it ing about five feet long, with a bail at the operation was•successful, it soon be-
showed up was in the assay office melt- the top. a wooden plug in the bottom_ , came know as the "Jackass Mail" be-
ing pots, and the treachery was discov- with a hole in it, and a leather flap on cause it took so long to get mail through.
ered too late to stop the flow of the the inside. It would let the water in, and In a further effort to get mail to and
stuff into the Basin's commerce. In fact, the weight of the water held it closed from California, the Post Office Depart-
when a committee from the miner's asso- when the bucket was lifted up. ment let a contract to John Butterfield,
ciation rode out to destroy the -deposit. We would let the bucket down in the the organizer of the American Express
they found that it had been nearly mined well and then pull it back up by turning Company, to carry mail from St. Louis,
out. The Basin boys had recognized a the windlass. It was emptied into a tub Missouri to San Francisco by way of
good thing when they saw one, and "' for our one and only cow, Bess. While I Oklahoma Territory, El Paso and Los
packed the sand off to add to their min- was drawing water each afternoon, my Angeles, a distance of approximately
ing profits, just as the cafes in town brother would go get Bess and lead her 2,800 miles.
added ground-up walnut shells to the cof- down to drink. This afternoon that I am Since this contract carried an annual
fee to make it go farther. _ thinking of started out as usual. I went subsidy of $600,000, Butterfield bought
- After that, for a time, it became very to the well and Harol went to get the coaches and fine horses, and with ex-
hard to spend gold "dust" in the area. cow. She was picketed just north of the perienced preparation, put the line into
Even the hated greenbacks had their house. We had not seen the range cattle service. The Butterfield Overland Mail
day. Some of the merchants wouldn't away down in the flat or I would not began a semi-weekly service on Septem-
take anything that hadn't been through have let him go by himself. We always ber 15, 1858, and put the first stage-
the assay office melting pots. Others de- had to shut the cow in the barn and we coach through to San Francisco on a
vised intricate devices to measure the children h~d to stay inside when the twenty-five day schedule, arriving Octo-
volume as well as the weight of the range cattle were around. They were ber 10 ..
"dust," knowing that the sand took up black. curly-haired and very' mean, and This in reality was the first transcon-
more space per ounce. would attack anyone on foot. tinental overland mail service. Though
When Harol loosed the cow that day the primary purpose was the carrying of
THE ONES to suffer most from the she saw the other cattle and started to- mail, the law required that 'it be carried
phony metal were the Chinese. The · ward them, and a seven-year-old boy does by relays of stagecoaches and it, there-
"China Boys" had little truck with the not have much chance to hold a cow. But fore, became the first transcontinental
assayers-or any other white man, for the little fellow just hung -onto the rope passenger line, as · well.
that matter. When they had an excess of · and tried to stop her. When the _ Black Beginning with this service, a pas-
the yellow metal they would deposit it Angus range cattle heard her bawl, they senger could take the Baltimore and
with the head of their Tong for safe- all came running. Ohio Railroad to St. Louis, the railroad
keeping. The Tongs, in turn, would keep I heard her bawl, too, and ran up the train to Tipton, Missouri, and there begin
the gold in its original form for fear the hill to see why. I tried to call to Harol the remaining 2,800 miles by stagecoach,
assayers would steal some of it in the but he did not hear me. Instead of to complete a transcontinental journey.
ing-ot-making process. · Brother letting go the rope and lying Waterman Ormsby, a reporter for the
They were consequently the last to dis- down. he just hung on. - New York Herald, was sent out by his
cover the truth of the Bummer Hill Dust _Bob Weatherhead, an Indian man who editors to make this complete westbound
rumors, and when the whole thing was was riding by, saw the cattle all run- trip on the first run. His reports and
over. owned more $16-an-ounce yellow ning and, of course. stopped to watch diary are now a matter of history as
sand than any other mining group in the them. Seeing my brother, he tried to get recorded in the Huntington Library
entire West. With the inter-Tong trans- to him before the cattle did. I was run- volume, The Butterfield Overland Mail.
fer of funds, a portion of the Bummer ning as fast as I could to help Harol, Two things augered against the But- ·
Hill Dust made its way into nearly every and still calling for him to stop. but it terfield Overland Mail to San Francisco.
other Chinese community. From San was no use. I can still see Bob . lying The schedule was twenty-five days and
Francisco to Denver, the yellow sand down over his horse's neck and hear the route was through the South. The
showed up in amounts varying from a him holler as only an Indian can. I. saw route was considered vulnerable in event
few grains to wheelbarrow loads. the smoke from his six-shooter as he of civil war, and operations were brought
In Silver City, Idaho Territory. a group fired over the herd trying to stop them. to a halt, as feared, soon after the firing
of Chinese merchants hired the local Then I _saw my brother disappear as the on Fort Sumter in March, 1861. The last
brass band to play for a funeral, and cattle closed around him. through mail over the route arrived
paid the group with dust liberally cut I stopped and stood there knowing I April 6, 1861.
with the sand of Bummer's Hill-a situ- was unable to help. As I watched, it The Central Route, considered in-
ation that, when discovered, caused the seemed to me that Bob's horse never operable because of the crossing of the
local newspaper, the Owyhee Avalanche, faltered as it plunged into that milling Continental Divide, the Sierras and the
50 True West