[Albert S. Evans, A Cloud-Burst on the Desert, The Overland Monthly, August 1869]

 

138 A CLOUD-BURST ON THE DESERT.                 [AUGUST,

A CLOUD-BURST ON THE DESERT.

            THERE is an undefinable, indescribable charm—a kind of weird attraction — which becomes most powerful and absorbing in traversing the burning deserts of the far South-west. To the wearied dwellers in cities, the silence and utter desolation of the red, sun-scorched desert, the naked, rock-ribbed mountains, the long, tortuous passes and cañons, the wide, treeless plains, strewn with volcanic ashes, and the slag and cinders of a burned-up world of the past, possess a charm which is lacking in the crowded streets, the rush, the roar and tumult of the town. Danger passed is something to look back to with a feeling of pleasure ; danger yet to be met comes in time to possess a charm of itself, and throw around the journey on the desert more of attraction than can be found in any trip through civilized and thickly peopled lands. Those who have never felt and enjoyed this sensation could gain no idea of it from a written description ; those who have felt it always look back to it with pleasure, and experience at intervals an almost irresistible longing to return to the scene and go through it all again.

            The dangers of desert travel have often been described, and recounted in a thousand ways by as many pens and tongues. Many a traveler has told us of his conflicts with the Apache, the Co- 

1869.]  A CLOUD–BURST ON THE DESERT.           139

manche and the Sioux, and that branch of the subject has been fairly exhausted; but one of the most common dangers, one which ever hangs suspended over the head of the traveler in the desert lands along our south-western border, seems never to have been touched upon to any extent. That danger is found in the terrible " cloud-burst " which in arid, treeless lands sometimes changes in an instant the whole surface of a wide landscape, and sweeps away in a moment objects which have served as landmarks for ages. The huge clouds which come up from the Pacific, and are borne over the Coast Range Mountains by the air-currents born of desert heat and ocean cold, entering some peculiar stratum of air, are operated upon in a manner which we are unable to describe — perhaps because we do not know any thing about it — and all the moisture contained in them becomes suddenly condensed and precipitated in overwhelming volume on the desert. Torrents roll forth from the barren mountains, tearing wide channels, many feet in depth, in the loose, gravelly sands of the plains, sweeping even great rocks before them in their irresistible fury, and disappear from the sight of the astonished traveler so suddenly as to leave him forever after in doubt as to the evidence of his senses : whether the terrible convulsions he has witnessed were in fact real or imaginary—actual occurrences, or the fantastic creation of a disordered fancy.

            All who have crossed the upper arm of the Colorado Desert, from San Bernardino via San Gorgonio Pass, Toros, Dos Palmas and Chucolwalla, to the Colorado River, will remember the ragged-edged volcanic rift in the southern side of the Glacier Mountains, twelve miles east of Dos Palmas, known as Cañon Springs—a villainous locality, affording a very little water, which at times is poisonous to man and beast from the impregnation of copper and other minerals, and always distasteful—with no grass, no wood, and millions of rattlesnakes, whose rank odor at times fills the whole place to such an extent that it is almost impossible to force a horse to remain there after his burning thirst has been slaked at the water-hole under the rocks. This is a common camping-place for travelers between Los Angeles and La Paz. Three years ago — in the month of March, 1866 — a Government train, consisting of a number of large army wagons, heavily laden with supplies, forage, etc., etc., accompanied by a large detachment of United States troops, bound for Arizona, was suddenly overwhelmed while camping here in fancied security by one of these irresistible torrents from a cloud-burst, swept out of the cañon, borne forth into the rocky desert, and scattered far and wide in the pitchy darkness of a starless night. One officer, while being borne down the torrent, was recognized by a Mexican vaquero as he swept past the camp-fire, lassoed and pulled by the neck out upon the rocky edge of the cañon. Others, less fortunate, were carried miles away and left among the black lava rocks, bruised, exhausted, and half dead, as the roaring waters subsided among the desert sands. Passing there a few days later, we found Indians digging barley out of the sand among the wrecks of the wagons, miles below the camping ground; and saw one poor soldier dying at Dos Palmas from the injuries he received while being rolled over the jagged rocks by the torrent, from which he vainly sought to escape. His ribs were crushed in by the rocks ; and when the falling waters left him on the desert, three miles from the cañon, he lay all night in his clothing, exposed to the cold wind, helpless, and even unable to cry out for assistance, had any been within hearing of his voice.

            At another time, while lost on the eastern side of Cabezon Valley, in the

140 A CLOUD-BURST ON THE DESERT.                 [AUGUST,

blazing heat of summer, the writer and a companion rode their horses at a gallop for at least fifteen miles along the dry bed of such a torrent, which had poured out of the San Bernardino Mountain on the day before ; and though we sought diligently all that day and the succeeding one for water, only a lucky accident, or a miracle, saved us at last from perishing with thirst, so suddenly had every drop sunk down into the desert sands and disappeared.

            It was in March, 1866, that the writer, having ridden through the wild and almost impassable defiles of the Red Mountain, on the eastern shore of the Colorado, and with infinite toil and trouble picked his way on foot down the pass on the north, dragging his weary horse after him into the valley of Bill Williams Fork, found himself at last safely on the northern bank of that accursed stream at "Aubrey City," awaiting the arrival of a friend from "up the creek," and enjoying the first "square meals " and comfortable bed which had fallen in his way for weeks.

            We were bound for the Great Central Copper Mine, on the south bank of Williams Fork, twelve miles from its mouth, and expected to reach there in a couple of hours' ride, having sent word to William Thompson, the Superintendent, in advance, to meet us at Aubrey. The Fork had been up, and as the road to the mines leads along the stream, which it crosses and recrosses a dozen times in as many miles, it was not safe for a stranger to attempt passing up alone, on account of the quicksands which form in shifting bars all along its course, and are liable to engulf in an instant horse and rider. When the stream falls for a short time, the sand packs down solid, and loaded teams can pass up and down with perfect safety ; but at high water the road is dangerous to the last degree. Thompson did not arrive that evening, and before morning the creek, swollen by a passing shower, went up to an impassable point again. Two days more, and an Indian swam the Fork with a "paper" in his hair, informing us that Thompson would be with us the next day. He came at last, worn down with the trip, covered with mud, and not in the best of humor, having been down twice in the quicksands, and having nearly drowned old Blanco, the faithful mustang, which he had led down for me to ride back upon. At sunrise next morning we were off. For three miles the road ran along a hard mesa, and admitted of fast riding, then followed around the base of a range of precipitous hills, just above the water's edge, for some distance. We determined to keep the northern bank as long as possible, then ford the creek and take to the hills on the southern side. Soon the trail ran into the creek, and we were compelled to work our way along the bank, over loose rocks and under precipices, as best we might. At last we reached a point beyond which it appeared doubtful if we could force our animals ; and dismounting, I left Thompson, with the horses, standing on a narrow ledge of rocks, and worked my way along on foot around a bold, projecting point to see if there was foothold for horses to be obtained. When just turning back to report the possibility of a passage I heard a cry ; and running with all speed to the place where Thompson and the horses had stopped, saw him holding old Moro by the bit, and looking ruefully over the rock toward the bed of the creek. A glance was enough to reveal the situation. Blanco, having tired of standing still, had attempted to turn around, in doing which he slipped and went heels over head off the rock, into the water and quicksand below. His head alone projected above the water, his body having disappeared beneath the quicksand. We got old Moro to a place of safety and tied him ; then went back and set to work with all

1869.] A CLOUD-BURST ON THE DESERT. 141

haste to rescue poor Blanco from death. Thompson wore, strapped on his thigh, a bowie-knife as large as a butcher's cleaver, made from a huge saw-mill file, and so heavy that he could cut through a sapling as thick as a man's wrist at every blow. With this he cut down willows almost as a man cuts grass with a scythe, and in a few minutes we had a wide bed of them laid carefully by the side of the poor, struggling brute. The surface of the sand was tolerably hard ; but as we walked over it, it quivered like jelly. The light sand and water beneath are of unknown depth, and liable to engulf one at any moment. The sensation in traveling over it was such as one experiences sometimes in a nightmare, but never in waking life, save in an Arizona quicksand. A Mexican came up on horseback — bound like ourselves to the mines — and lent a hand. With many a weary tug and strain we succeeded at last in getting the horse out on his side on the willows, and stripping him of his saddle and bridle, allowed him a few minutes to breathe ; then, with yells and blows, forced him to scramble to his feet, and ran him out upon a little island, where there was hard ground. The horses were now all brought together, and saddles and blankets arranged for a new start. Thompson walked out upon a sand flat which led to another little island, and, though it shook and quivered under him like jelly, pronounced it possible to run our horses over it. The Mexican started ahead, and his horse crossed in safety to the island in the middle of the stream. The crust of hard sand, weakened by the passage of his horse, began to yield under the feet of old Blanco ; and in spite of yells and blows, he stopped for an instant, then went down like a plummet, and only his head was to be seen. His fall frightened Moro, and he halted, only to go down like Blanco, in the twinkling of an eye. Then, Thompson, like one possessed, threw off everything but his shirt and pants, and the air grew blue with curses. The first proceeding was repeated, and we soon had willows piled by the sides of the horses, as before. The dumb animals, with an instinct more than human, folded their legs under them and remained as quiet as if asleep, fully conscious that the least struggling would engulf them beyond the chance of a resurrection. Doubting our ability to lift the horses from the quicksands by our strength alone, we attempted to wade over the Fork to get assistance from a Mexican camp a little distance away. The stream, though rapid, was fordable, but the wide flat of quicksand on the other side was impassable. I fell through once, and was only saved from being engulfed and drowned in the treacherous sands by a pole which I carried horizontally in my hands, which sustained my weight, and enabled me to pull myself out and regain firmer footing. Floundering about in the mud and water, losing our spurs and falling, over and over again, we succeeded at last in getting our horses out upon their sides on the piles of willows, and finally ran them at full speed to a gravelly bar, on which they could stand in safety until they were rested, and we had cleaned up our saddles and equipments, and made ready for a new start. It was now 10 A. M., and the sun, shining from an unclouded sky, made the air in the narrow valley oppressively hot. Thompson looked uneasily up the Fork, from time to time, and the horses appeared to fret and look apprehensively in the same direction ; but I saw nothing of danger, and nothing was said about it. "Well, we are over the worst of it, and in fifteen minutes more we will reach the upper crossing and be out of trouble," said Thompson, with evident relief.

            We were riding along the flat gravelly bar, congratulating ourselves on the escape from the loss of our animals in the quicksands, when a dull, roaring sound,

142 A CLOUD-BURST ON THE DESERT.                 [AUGUST,

like the passing of a distant hurricane over the country, coming from the eastward, broke on our ears. "We must hurry, for the creek is going to rise — I saw a black cloud up toward the head of the creek at daylight, and have been fearing a freshet all the morning," said Thompson ; and we urged our horses into a rapid trot to reach the crossing. Suddenly the roar increased to a volume like distant thunder, and the Mexican, throwing up his hand, with the exclamation, " Mother of God, protect us ! " wheeled his horse for the mesa on the north side of the stream, and dashed away at full gallop. One glance up the stream was enough — I shall never forget the sight ! Around the bend ahead, and perhaps half a mile distant, was coming a solid wall of water at least ten feet in height, filling the whole valley of the Fork, and bearing every thing before it. We ran our horses at their utmost speed for the mesa; and just as we reached its foot, the water, driven out of the bed of the creek by the pressure of the coming flood, ran around us. We reached the top of the mesa, some thirty feet in height, and looked down upon a scene which beggars tongue and pen. The valley of the Fork along which we had ridden but a moment before dry- shod, was filled with a roaring flood from bank to bank. The purling stream, which a man could ford on foot ten minutes before, was now fully a thousand yards in width, from ten to thirty feet in depth, and with a current with which no race-horse could compete for speed. The whole face of the flood was covered with drift-wood ; great cotton-woods were lifted out of the earth and borne away like straws : nothing could stand before the tremendous rush of waters. The air was filled with the rank odor of alkali and fresh earth carried down by the raging waters ; and the surface of the flood was covered with a cream-like foam, showing how violent had been the action of the torrent above.  Near where we reached the mesa, a party of Mexicans were at work cultivating a small ranch, and as the flood approached them, attempted to run for the heights. A minute later, we saw them swimming for their lives in the edge of the torrent, while their house was going down the Fork bodily with the speed of a high-pressure steamboat. Their crops were already washed away, and they were reduced to beggary, even before they touched the shore and were assured of their lives. The deafening roar of the surging waters made it almost impossible for us to make ourselves heard by each other, even when a few feet apart ; and words were idle even if they could be heard. We lay an hour in silence on the mesa, gazing at the wild waste of waters before us, and then turned our horses' heads for the black hills to the northward, knowing full well that we could not cross the flood with a steamboat, if we had one, and that we must seek a new road to the place we had left in the morning. Hour after hour we toiled on, dragging our almost worn-out horses up and down shelving hill-sides, and over loose, jagged rocks, which cut our boots to pieces and tore the shoes from the feet of the animals ; and, just as night set in, we arrived once more at Aubrey, utterly exhausted with our fruitless day's labor.

            All that long, dreary night we lay in our blankets in our friend's hospitable cabin, and listened to the roar of the waters and the splashing of trees in the flood, as the banks on the opposite side of the stream were undermined and went crashing down, to be swallowed up in the hungry torrent. Next morning we found that the flood, pouring into the Colorado from Williams Fork, had set back the waters of the river like a dam, and raised it bankful for miles to the northward.

            That day the Fork fell rapidly, and next morning we determined to once

1869.]  A CLOUD–BURST ON THE DESERT.           143

more attempt to get up to the mine. Our horses had just been saddled and made ready for the trip, when a man came down from a ranch about a mile distant, in breathless haste, to tell us that the hostile Apaches, or Hualapais, had made a raid upon him and run off his entire stock of horses and mules, seven or eight in number, toward the mountains. Irataba, the old desert giant, head chieftain of the Mojaves, had arrived on the evening with José, one of his young captains, and five young warriors, from La Paz, en route for Fort Mojave, where half his tribe reside. The old fellow at once ran up to the ranch, and soon returned to tell us that there were but five Indians in the band which had made the raid ; and if we would make all possible haste we might overtake them before they were joined by another party, clean them out, recover the plunder, and ornament the pommels of our saddles with very elegant top-knots as souvenirs of a pleasure trip in Arizona. I have not space to tell the story of the hastily gathered Falstaffian army, which an hour later rode forth into the unexplored desert mountains to the north-east ; of the long day's toil in the burning heat, the chase at night-fall, the ambuscade which we escaped, the bitter cold which nipped us as we lay hid all night in the chaparral, the pursuit next day, and the temporary escape of the Hualapais with their plunder, the exasperation of Irataba, who with his young braves had tracked the flying enemy like so many bloodhounds on the scent and on foot kept up with our horses, which were going at a swinging trot, or even at a gallop ; of the second and third expeditions, the burning of the Hualapai villages, and the bloody reprisals on either side which followed in quick succession. Suffice it, that just a week after we made our first attempt to go up the creek twelve miles, we emerged from the desert on the northern bank of that delectable stream, opposite the mining camp, and were met beneath the wide-spreading alamos by an old Mexican, in ragged trowsers and wide, slouched sombrero, whose odd rig and huge American beard had earned for him the sobriquet of Robinson Crusoe. Angel — such was his patronymic — received us with outstretched arms, and welcomed us to the camp. He had been out on a little paseo that day — it was Sunday, and he was not obliged to work at the mine — but had not been very lucky. It is true that he had run across two Apache-Mojaves, a buck and a squaw, in a canon in the hills, and got them both with one shot from his dilapidated old musket ; but he had seen no other game, and was a little discouraged. It was not a good day for sport ! He piloted us from island to island, until we were at last safely across the stream ; and, as we went on up to camp, showed us obligingly where two men mounted on mules had been caught by the cloudburst in a narrow cañon and overwhelmed in an instant. Both mules and one of the riders perished in the flood, but the other man climbed the rocks to a point where the water just touched his beard, and there clung, like a young chimney swallow to a brick, until the subsiding flood fell below his waist, and he knew that the worst was over.

            These are some of the well attested effects of the "cloud-burst" on the desert, and of such are the " moving adventures by flood and field " which the traveler encounters on the American southwestern frontier.