The Wichita Daily Eagle

THE DESERT'S SILENT CITY.

An Abandoned Mining Town Left to Snakes, Wolves and Desolation.

This is the fourth day since we realized that we were lost. We have kept the Black mountains to our backs and our faces to the west. There are six of us, but two are blinded and must be led along. Our guide is one of them, else we should not have gone wrong over sterile plains, over wastes of sand, over miles of thicket and scrub and broken ground, and now the afternoon is waning. The last food was eaten thirty hours ago-the last few drops of water went to moisten the crumbs. It is a pitiful sight to watch men who thirst. They stagger as they walk. They clutch at space with their fingers. They are dead to each other, saying never a word from hour to hour. They seem to stare into vacancy as they walk, and the smile which flits over the face now and then is the laugh of an idiot. And there is a feeling of selfishness in each breast never known before-never to be known again. They watch each other like wild beasts. It is the fear that one may discover a great lake or river of pure cold water and drain it to the last drop before the others come up. It is sand here-a soil on which never a spear of grass will take root. It blisters our feet anew as we toil on. Sometimes the great rattlesnakes will crawl grudgingly away at sight of us, but oftener we must turn aside and make a new path. It is a plain of horror and desolation. Even the atmosphere above it is given over to the vulture alone. What hope have we? Why not lie down and die? Since noon every eye has been fastened on a green spot miles away. There are trees there-water, shelter, perhaps people and food. To the right and left we can see green mountains. We raised no shout at sight of this haven. Thirst had benumbed and silenced us. Our tongues were sticks-our lips cracked and bleeding. Plodding, staggering, stumbling, we press forward, and as the sun is within a hand's breadth of the horizon line we find grass under our feet, trees around us, and before us a city-aye, a city in the valley! We stand and stare. We are dumb, but we are not mistaken. We are at the end of a long street, and it is lined with log and board and stone houses-a hundred of them. At our left bubbles up a great spring to form a river fifty miles away. There is no haste. An hour ago we would have sold our hopes of Heaven for a gill of water. Now we have lost our thirst. It is only after we dip our hands in the cold water and moisten lips and tongue that a frenzy seizes us and we can not drink enough. The guide asks what we see around us, and when told of the streets and houses he whispers: "It is Death Valley, and we have come to the Silent City!" While the others kindle a fire to roast the rabbits so easily secured two of us advance until we are at the beginning of the street. On the first building there is a faded sign of "Hotel." There are no doors in the frames, no window sashes in the openings, and a part of the roof has fallen in. We look into the room where men once drank and cursed and shed each other's blood. A rattlesnake lies in the center of the floor and a lizard frisks along the moldering shelves. We go slowly up the street, pausing to look into a doorway here and there. There is grass from side to side of the street now. Years ago the feet of horses and mules and wheels of wagons cut the earth to dust. Desperate men rode up and down here and performed desperate deeds. This building, which needs but a stronger puff of wind to bring it to earth, was a saloon; the next a grocery; the next an eating-house; the next a hotel. Here and there a weather-beaten sign still holds out, and before one of them we pause for a few minutes. It swings on rusty hinges before a hut which might still shelter a wayfarer and reads: "Undertaker." This man buried the dead when the city teemed with life. Time has buried the city itself. Here and there, as we wander on, a door creaks on its hinges in the evening breeze. Creak, creak, creak! It is thirty years since time buried the city, and yet the doors creak on. At intervals decay has left a pane of glass in its sash. It catches the rays of the setting sun and throws a reflection on the faces of the Indians camped twenty miles away. They are awed and speak in whispers. They know of the Silent City, but they never approach it. They believe it was accursed. Serpents wriggle off the rotting door sills as we advance, and now and then a wolf rushes out of a building in a frightened way and makes off with dragging tail. We come to the end of the street at last. Here is the graveyard. Once there were headboards. Nothing is now left to mark them. Each grave is sunken; into each cavity the wolf has dug with ghoulish instinct. On a dead and leafless tree in the center of the plot sits a great owl blinking at the last rays of sunset. There are days when the vulture drops down here and walks about in search of food, but he finds nothing. It is a quarter of a century since the bones were picked clean of meat. As the twilight comes and the shadows fade into darkness we make our way back along the street of desolation and death. It is as silent as the grave. The silence makes us fearful, and we hasten our steps. Now and then we look back to see if we are pursued. We think of the spirits of the dead gathering in the Silent City as night comes down, and chills creep over us and our limbs grow weak. And when we sit at the camp fire and speak of what we have seen no man dare raise his voice above a whisper. Even the men whose eyes were burned and blinded by the awful heat and glare of the July sun beating down on the sands of the desert try to look into the darkness and shiver as they crowd closer.-Chicago Times.