"You see what I mean," Bill said, concluding his story. "Things like that. Of course we don't watch no parades but we also don't get pushed around and run over and tromped on."
In the last twelve words Bill expressed what hundreds have failed to explain in pages of flowered phrase--the appeal of the desert.
Soon I was back at the store. Bill and Blackie, over a new bottle were swapping memories of noted desert characters who had highlighted the towns and camps from Tonopah to the last hell-roarer. The great, the humble, the odd and eccentric. Through their conversation ran such names as Fireball Fan; Mike Lane; Mother Featherlegs; Shorty Harris; Tiger Lil; Hungry Hattie; Cranky Casey; Johnny-Behind-the-Gun; Dad Fairbanks; Fraction Jack Stewart; the Indian, Hungry Bill; and innumerable Slims and Shortys featured in yarns of the wasteland.
Blackie's chief interest in life, Bill told me was books. "About all he does is read. Doesn't have to work. Of course, like everybody in this country, he's always going to find $2,000,000,000 this week or next."
Though only incidental, history was brought into their conversation when Bill, giving me "free information" as his sign announced, told me I would be able to see the place where Manly crossed the Panamint.
"Manly never knew where he crossed," Blackie said. "He tried to tell about it 40 years afterward and all he did was to start an argument that's going on yet. That's why I say you can write the known facts about Death Valley history on a postage stamp with the end of your thumb."
The tongue oil loosened Calico Bill's story of Indian George and his trained mountain sheep. "George had the right idea about gold. Find it, then take it out as needed. One time an artist came to George's ranch and made a picture of the ram. When he had finished it he stepped behind his easel and was watching George eat a raw gopher snake when the goat came up. Rams are jealous and mistaking the picture for a rival, he charged like a thunderbolt.
"It didn't hurt the picture, but knocked the painter and George through both walls of George's shanty. George picked himself up. 'Heap good picture. Me want.' The fellow gave it to him and for months George would tease that goat with the picture. One day he left it on a boulder while he went for his horse. When he got back, the boulder was split wide open and the picture was on top of a tree 50 feet away.