Robert Welles Ritchie

“ Nasty guerilla warfare ensued all up and down the semi-desert Owens Valley lying east of the Sierras in the east-central part of the State. A detachment of rough-neck California Volunteers initiated a private massacre of which not even the settlers could be proud. ”

“ Of course he was ignorant of events above ground until the body of his partner Crow came hurtling down upon him—thrown down by the Indians whom Matthews had thought to drive away. Then came a rain of rocks which the luckless miner in semi-darkness could only fend by warding with his shovel. Next the windlass rape was pulled up by the savages on the surface; maybe they thought they'd killed Byrnes with their rocks or else they just wanted the rope.
At any rate, there was the man Byrnes seventy feet below the surface of the desert and with a dead man for companion. No food, no water. ”