The Boy With the U. S. Survey Part 16

"It's a sort of stone that they make up into all sorts of jewels that women wear. Of course it's not precious like sapphire and emerald and all that sort of thing, but that's perhaps because it is not as well known, nor as rare. It's just as pretty, I think. I'd rather have it than a gold mine or a copper mine, either, for that matter."

"Why?" asked Roger.

"Because it can be worked so easily. You see a small box of that stuff can be packed on a mule any distance and then s.h.i.+pped, and if a different point is used each time no one knows where it comes from and there is no compet.i.tion. Now copper, you see, is only valuable in large quant.i.ties, and it needs a big industry to run it. And of this rarer sort of stuff, there's lots of it around for any one that wants to look for it."

"What sort of stuff?"

"All these rare mineral earths. The clay that's used in making gas mantles, for instance; or there's tungsten, which is worth a lot now for making the wires of incandescent light. I've a friend who's rich because he got hold of a deposit of tungsten from reading the Geological Survey bulletins. There's a lot more of it in the Snake Range of Nevada, just waiting for somebody who's got energy enough to go ahead and develop it."

Thus, throughout the entire trip, Roger found his interest in the work greatly whetted by this new view-point, looking at the Survey from the side of the shrewd Western man, seeking practical results, rather than the more professional and scientific aspect of the field worker himself.

Indeed, it opened the boy's eyes immensely to the vastness of the importance of the department when he realized that there was scarcely a branch of manufacture that did not depend on some rare element, in some of its processes, and that these rare elements were brought to light in the very work that he had been doing. So it chanced that when Roger and his friend reached Daggett, he was as enthusiastic concerning the economic side of the work as he had been regarding its opportunities for adventure.

Ma.s.seth had estimated the time of the party which Roger was to join with close accuracy, for the boy had not been in the little settlement more than three days when the party rode up, all on mules. Roger introduced himself and presented Ma.s.seth's letter.

"Oh!" said his new leader in surprise. "So you're the boy who crossed the Grand Canyon alone! I heard of that in San Bernardino, some tourists were telling the story."

"Yes, Mr. Pedlar," said Roger with a flush. "But there wasn't so much to it, I just had to get across."

"Well, I'm glad to have you. Now what is your idea in joining us, because I see Mr. Ma.s.seth says that you are still on duty with him."

Roger explained the two months' signal that had been agreed upon, and Pedlar, tall and light of hue, as though the desert had bleached him, whistled softly.

"He's always taking long chances," he said, "but to do him justice they generally come out all right. As I understand it, then, you want to come along for a few weeks and then get back to Bright Angel Point in plenty of time."

"Yes, sir," the boy answered.

"Well, that will be about right, only it's not going to take as long as you think. It will be just a hurried reconnoissance. I suppose you know why we're going in?"

"Mr. Ma.s.seth said something about borax," the lad replied, "but he didn't say just what you were going to do."

"It's this way, Doughty," was the reply. "Borax, you know, was first obtained by evaporating the water of some lakes in California. Later, in the beds of some old dry lakes, the borax was found already evaporated by the sun, and for years these marsh crusts formed the whole supply of the country. Then the Geological Survey pointed out that before these lakes were dried up the borax must have flowed into them by means of some small streams or just the regular drainage of the rainfall."

"You mean," said Roger, interrupting, "that there must have been a lot of it near by somewhere, and that each rain just soaked away a little and brought it along."

"Exactly. Therefore it was up to the Survey to locate these large deposits, and this was done. A large bed was found at Borate, about twelve miles northeast of here, and this proved so valuable that more surveying was done, especially in the region about Death Valley, where one of the old salt marshes was located."

"Then it was the Survey that gave to the country all the borax it is now using."

"It was," replied Pedlar. "Now, you see, I am making a hasty trip to the known deposits, so that other related beds can be pointed out, as each new find adds to the resources of the country, or, in other words, makes the United States just that much richer."

"How is that?" asked the boy. "The government doesn't run the mines."

"No. But don't you see, the United States means the people of the United States, and if the money spent on borax goes to American producers in American fields instead of to Italy, where so much of it went before, the country is richer to that amount."

Then, putting the matter as simply as he could, Pedlar explained to the boy how greatly the commercial prosperity of the country is due to some of the lesser known government bureaus, and pointed out the wisdom of the fostering of American industries. Even so, it was not until the tangible discovery of a hitherto unknown bed of rock salt, fifty feet in thickness, that Roger realized how, every day in the year, the prosperity of the country was being advanced by this patient scientific investigation. The new salt deposit was found at the extreme south end of Death Valley, a few miles before the trail went through a gap in the Funeral Mountains. Skirting the Amargosa Desert, a furnace of cactus and alkali, the party reached Grapevine Peak, from which may be seen perhaps the most desolate and forbidding view in the Western Hemisphere.

"Behind you," broke in the voice of the chief, "beginning at that peak you see fifty miles away in the distance, and which is known as Oak Springs b.u.t.te, is a section of the country containing over 3,000 square miles, equal in size to the states of Delaware and Rhode Island together, which is absolutely waterless. In that appalling land of thirst there is not a river, stream, or brook; a spring is a thing unknown; no well has ever been sunk, and even the Indian waterhole exists only in imagination. At rare, very rare intervals, a cloudburst may come upon the parched land, but five minutes later there is no sign of moisture save for a cup in a ravine or a crevice in a rock, where water may lie for twenty-four hours. It is dryer and hotter than the Great Sahara Desert of Africa, and wild and rough beyond belief."

"And has that awful place been covered by the Survey, too?" asked the boy.

"I did one quadrangle," answered Pedlar, "and there's a party in there this season."

"But how do they manage for water?"

"They tote every drop. And," with a grim meaning, "they are not taking baths twice a day at that!"

"On this other side," continued the chief of the party after a pause, turning round, "is a place you know well by reputation."

"That is the famous Death Valley?" queried Roger.

"That," said the chief, putting his heels to the mule's side and starting down the slope, "is the infamous Death Valley."

Half-way down the slope Pedlar halted and pointed to a sign on a box lid, stuck into a pile of stone.

"Gruesome advertising, that!" he commented.

Roger read it. It was the signboard of a local undertaking company, and the implication of such a need for every one descending into the valley was to the boy more sinister than any of the stories he had heard about it. As they reached the valley, dunes twenty to thirty feet high surrounded them on every side, with a salt sand between, sometimes soft, sometimes with a treacherous crust through which the hoofs of the mules sank, often cutting their legs, into the wounds of which the alkaline dust penetrated, causing great pain. The boy tore his coat into strips to bind around the pasterns of Duke, but even so some slight scratches were unavoidable.

They journeyed on over this fearful traveling for many weary miles, till, suddenly, Roger's quick eyes, eagerly looking for new things, discerned at the entrance to a small rock-bound canyon a sliver of wood broken off and sticking upright in the sand. As wood in that country is as unusual as it would be to see a shaft of burnished silver protruding from the arid ground, Roger rode up to it. There, penciled apparently recently on the wood, were the following words:

"Have gone down canyon looking for the spring; have been waiting for you.--t.i.tus."

The boy called to the chief. Pedlar came over and read the message, then quietly and with reverence removed his hat.

"Poor chap!" he said very softly. "There is no spring in that canyon."

He summoned the other members of the party and silently they rode up the narrow cleft. Roger and the chief were riding in advance, and after a few minutes' ride the latter pulled his mule in sharply, and pointed to the figure of a man lying near a rock in the full glare of the sun.

"Perhaps he isn't dead?" said the boy, his heart in his mouth.

"No use to hope that, my boy," was the grave reply. "See, he must have lain down in the afternoon, when that spot was shaded, and died before the next sun rose. No living man would lie exposed to such a sun as this."

They rode up. It was as the chief had said, and t.i.tus's friend, whoever he might have been, would never see him more.

"Shall we make a grave?" asked Roger in an awed tone.

"Better in the little cemetery at Rhyolite," answered the other. "I will send word."

"But ought we not to make a pile of stones over him, or something?"

suggested Roger, his mind full of thoughts running on the possibility of interference by wild beasts.

"Nothing can hurt him here," was the reply. "Not even a buzzard will haunt so desolate a spot as this. But still----" he paused. Then thinking that it might ease the boy's mind, as well as show respect for the dead, he gave orders to raise a cairn of stones over the body of "t.i.tus."

The discovery cast a gloom over the party, and the penciled piece of wood, which was to be sent back to Rhyolite to be used instead of a headstone, seemed an uncanny thing to bear. The tragedy had given the boy a violent distaste for the bleak country, for he seemed to see a body lying under the lee of every cliff. He was glad when they reached civilization again, and he could turn his face away from the land of sage brush and alkali.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE DEATH VALLEY.