(TEN)

Pedro and Will Pablo
friends of the McCallums

4

  May, Hamilton, and their two children, with Emily and Pearl, moved to Los Angeles after spending a few weeks with Harry in Palm Springs.  Hamilton, an M.D., developed a keen interest in attending the Mission Indians in Palm Springs, so his trips to the desert were frequent.  Harry’s suit to force the Riverside companies to take up their options for power lines failed.  How could he have hoped to extract money from dried up streams and a river called Whitewater?  White, indeed—from cracked clay and parched stone!  To raise money to pay off Louise, he was forced, with May and Hamilton’s Power of Attorney, to sell May’s land in Section 19 for one hundred dollars to J.F. Casey.  In April, he sold another ten acres of her land for two hundred and fifty dollars—satisfying most of the five hundred dollars Louise had asked for.  As indicated in the journal, Harry also gave Louise all his land; that is, his land in Section 19.  He couldn’t give her any of the undivided Syndicate property.  Louise was taken care of and vanished from his life.

  In the summer of 1900, May, Hamilton and children returned to Chicago with Mother Emily and Pearl.  May begged Harry to come with them, but he refused.  It seemed impossible Harry could survive.  He’d become superstitious about the moun­tain as his father before him but unlike his father, he didn’t have resources to protect it.  However, the foot of the mountain did include the McCallum Ranch, and Emily still had clear title to it.  No debtor could touch it.

  To get supplies in and feed himself, Harry borrowed, on September 20, 1900, one thousand dollars from M.W. Stewart Company, a ranch supply house in Los Angeles.  The Stewart Company wanted the McCallum Ranch as collateral.  Harry flatly refused.  He’d die from starvation before he’d pledge the Ranch—which he could do easily using his mother’s Power of Attorney.  The Company wouldn’t accept land in Section Nineteen as security.  Finally, they agreed to accept as collateral Emily’s land in Section Eleven.  At this time he also borrowed ten thousand dollars against Palm Valley Water Company stock.

  He realized if he failed to make good on the Stewart Company loan, the company might get judgment not only on Section Eleven, but the McCallum Ranch itself—and even May’s property—threatening to take any land which Harry con­trolled as “attorney in fact.”  Pledging his mother’s property was a terrible risk, but he had no other choice.  The ten thousand dollar loan against Water Company stock would help see him through the winter and spring, at least.

  Several months passed.  Still no rain; no snow on the mountains.  His health began to deteriorate dangerously.  Sometimes the cough was so bad he’d lie for hours in bed at Hillside House, too exhausted to dress himself, suffering ghastly visions—distorted memories.  He knew he must somehow get back to Chicago.  He’d go insane if he was alone much longer.

  In the spring of 1901, using Emily’s power of attorney, he sold Hillside House, property which comprised two hundred and fifty feet of Ranch land extend­ing out from the moun­tain.  It would help pay the train fare to Chicago.  His mother still held title to acreage at the foot of the mountain and most of the Ranch.  And he retained title to the Syndicate property.  Perhaps he’d return in the fall.  Maybe the drought would end, reviving a thirsting land.  For now the dream was over—and the nightmare.   The remnants of John Guthrie’s Eden lay abandoned against the foot of San Jacinto.

  The one-thousand dollar debt to M.W. Stewart Company, and ten thousand dollars in liens against   Water Company stock were still unsatisfied.