This is an old desert legend that I first heard when I was
still a young boy. Over the years, I have heard it retold in several forms.
Following is the story as I first heard it.
On his way to Dos Cabezas, a solitary miner who had come to
the territory because he heard there was good prospecting found himself lost
and alone in the flats just north of the Dragoon Mountains. Under the heat of
the blistering sun of midday, his burro suddenly dropped dead from heatstroke.
The prospector knew that if he did not find shelter and something to drink he
would also not make it.
In the shimmering heat of the afternoon sun, the landscape bounced
around before his eyes, Staggering forward, the miner was determined not to
drop. The heat of the desert flats crept deep into his body and he found his
mind wandering. Just before collapsing, the miners’ last coherent thought was
about the pain his mother would feel when he did not return home from his
journey.
As the miner lay in the sand and dust of the hot desert, he was brought
back to semi-consciousness by a steady sound that resembled the chugging of a
steam engine. Slowly he raised his head from the hard and dusty ground and
looked around him through eyes that he couldn’t trust. To his muddled mind, It
sounded like a train was approaching. But that just couldn’t be impossible
because there were no trains or tracks in this hostile location at that time.
In fact, there wasn’t any type of town around miles. Again the unmistakable
sound came to him of a steam engine chugging away but this time the sound was
louder. All of a sudden he recognized the sound and hiss of steam from an
engine. He knew he was hallucinating. It was the only reasonable explanation.
As he broiled in the heat, he rested his head on his arms and expected
death at any time to overtake him. Some where in his mind, he seemed to hear
the words of an old-timer, another miner, from whom he had learned of the good
prospecting sites in the north. A grizzled up and weather beaten old man, he
had spoken one time of a mystery train that had come bursting out of nowhere
and ran just above the flats where no railroad tracks had ever been lain. The
old miner claimed that this mystery train had come across the desert at a great
speed. The old miner swore that before his very eyes, a dark smudge against the
dazzling light of noonday had mysteriously come out of nowhere and had just as
mysteriously vanished into the distance as the old man watched. Jus before the
mystery train vanishing into the dazzle of the sun it started to shimmer like a
reflection on water.
This wasn’t the first wild story the young miner had heard and simply
thought the old man wasn’t playing with a full deck. He knew these types of
illusions were common and caused by heat stroke. Now he was beginning to
wonder. With the steady chugging sound growing louder in his ears, he just was
not so sure. In fact, he wasn’t sure of much of anything right then and there.
Raising his head once again, he saw a black speck, very dark, almost like the
deepest of shadows, rapidly coming closer to him. Again he heard that chugging
and this time it was accompanied by a sharp whistle, the type made by a train.
Through his ever blurring eyes, the speck grew larger. He thought he could make
out the shape of a black steam engine pulling two cars. Along with a bright
yellow headlight gleamed oddly in the white-hot glare of the sun.
Again the sharp whistle sounded as the train speed toward him. He
wanted to leap out of the speeding trains path, but his heat racked body was
too far gone. He could not even lift himself to his knees let alone leap
anywhere. Closing his eyes in anticipation, he braced for the impact. To his
surprise however, the train slowed suddenly and stopped just a few feet from
his head. From out of the train stepped a smiling faced man he assumed was the
conductor. With a few quick steps, the man came over to him. The conductor, if
that who he was, bent down and lifted the young miner from the ground. His feet
were picked up by someone else whom he couldn't see and he was quickly carried
inside a passenger car. It felt like he was being laid down in the aisle of the
car and a number of kind faces surrounded him. He tried to speak but his tongue
and throat were swollen. Finally he managed to faintly gasp our
"Water", just before losing consciousness.
It was the feeling of cold water on his face that brought him back to
consciousness. Slowly opening his eyes, he saw a tall man wearing a sheriff's
badge carefully trickling water from a pitcher over him. The man put down the
pitcher and held a cup to his lips. Just a little water at a time and
carefully, not wanting to give him too much water at once. It took the young
miner several times of swishing the water around his swollen tongue before he
could even swallow. Finally as his swollen tongue and throat shrank and he was
able to speak, he asked the sheriff what had happened.
Pointing to someone standing beside the him, the sheriff dryly said,
"this fellow found you nearly dead about five miles out of town".
"What town?" asked the young prospector cautiously, visions
of the mystery trains and that happy faced conductor still in his head.
The sheriff looked at him strangely. "You’ve just had too much sun and it has messed with your head" said the sheriff. "You're in
"It's a stop on the train, then?" the young prospector asked hesitantly.
"Train? There isn’t no train around for miles," said the sheriff. "You'd better have some more water and rest a bit. That sun's nearly got you loco!"
The young miner laid back down thankfully and closed his eyes. He
wasn't sure why the mystery train had come to his rescue, but he was sure glad
it had stopped for him.
A
number of years later, the Southern Pacific Railroad did put a track right
through Wilcox , Arizona
and real trains started rolling through Arizona
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