Peg-leg Smith

(as written by Edward Harvey Davis, Mesa Grande) The narrative below is true in all essential details. The names, places, events are absolutely true, and I wrote it down as it was told to me by my father, Captain Lewis S. Davis.The story of the Peg-leg mine on the Colorado Desert has been the cause of more deaths by thirst than any other mysterious mine. The story as I have heard it dozens of times, originated with Peg-leg Smith, an old hunter, who, while crossing the Colorado desert, mounted a hill to get his bearings, stooped down and picked up some pebbles and stuffed them in his pocket, and then continued his journey to San Bernardino. He had the stones he had found analyzed and they found them to be filled with gold. He told where he had found the nuggets way out in the desert on one of a group of three hills. He died in the hospital. For twenty or thirty years, miners, prospectors and people with no desert experience, have hunter unsuccessfully for this mysterious mine and many have left their bones bleaching in the sand. Peg-leg got caught in his own bear trap in the Rocky Mountains and had to cut his own leg off with his hunting knife to save his life. Then he hewed a stick for a wooden leg. EHD

here the trails grow dim in the waverin' heat
An' the sky is a cloudless blue;
Where the purple ranges far away
Are always callin' you.

I hear their voices in the night
When the moon comes over the rim,
An' the smoke trees in the canyon wash
Look spectral, white an' dim.

I must go to the land of the blue mirage
Where there's nary a drop to drink,
I've got to go where the chollas grow,
Way down in the Salton drink.

The rugged ranges bleak an' bare
With neither shrub nor tree,
Their temple canyons deep an' wild
Are always callin' me.

My burro's packed, my canteen's filled,
My bed roll lashed on tight,
With powder an' grub an' pick an' drills,
We're pullin' out tonight.

We're headin' straight to the Malapi hills
Where Peg-leg found his ore,
An' where he found so much loose float,
There must be plenty more.

They found him deep in the Malapi hills,
In the grease woods' scanty shade;
They followed his crooked trail for miles,
By the tracks his burro made.

His shrunken hands clutched his dry canteen,
An' close to his prospect hole,
In the stillness of the night he had answered the call
An' the desert claimed his soul.
​............  EHD