Jim White
Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico
JIM AND THE KID SPEND THREE DAYS IN THE CAVERNS
At the Lucas X-X-X Ranch there was a Mexican boy about fifteen years old who worked steadily and said little. He couldn’t speak much English, and the cowboys were not gifted with much Spanish. Jim White never did know the boy’s real name or what became of him finally, but during those days called the young Mexican, as did the others, the “Kid”.
One day, the Kid called the exploring White aside and overcame language difficulties enough to offer his company on that risky trip into the cave! Jim accepted the offer readily enough! To return to the scene of his lonely adventure had by now become a consuming desire. Among Jim White’s acquaintances, if only “the Kid” would make the exploration with him, it was still a lot better than going alone.
Five days from his first trip into the cave, Jim White and the Kid set out with a couple of crude torches, a canteen of water, a sack of grub and a can of kerosene. Right up to the moment of departure, White expected his volunteer-companion to get cold feet and back out of the project, but at last they were headed together toward the Big Hole.
The kerosene torches were a great improvement over the lantern used in the first visit. The torches gave sufficient light to enable fairly good progress. Now familiar to the man, the startling, dazzling formations frightened the Kid, but as White expressed it: “He was a game little cuss, and never whimpered once. I doubt if any man could have stood up under the strain any better than the Kid”.
For three days, the strangely-matched pair roved and explored the recesses of the cave, covering about the same territory now open to visitors who take the guided tours. For Jim White and the Kid, however, there was not the comfortable element of bright lights—certainty—and sure-footed guides along well-established paths. Their three-day exploration was an unbroken chain of hazards and thrills, findings and fears, adventures which sound exaggerated even when evidence lends them support!
If you could ask Jim White about his biggest thrill during that unbelievable three-day experience, he would say: “During the last day, I was over in one corner of what we later called ‘The Big Room’, crawling along a ledge of rock. I sat down to rest and just looked around as I sat there. Over on the other side of the ledge, what do you suppose I saw? Staring right back at me was the skull of a man! Fast as I could I brought my torch about, and there was the whole skeleton intact. If I thought some giant could have been living in this cave along with the giant formations, right there seemed to be my proof! Those thigh-bones looked to me like the biggest kind of beef-shanks! I tried to pick up one of the leg-bones and it crumbled in my fingers. Just about that time a drop of water fell on my hand. Only the Good Lord knows how long that skeleton had been lying under that drip, but it must have been long enough for the mineral water to soften the bones. It took just a touch to crumble the thigh, but the skull was not under the drip, so it was perfect. When I picked it up, the Kid backed away. I suggested that we’d take it back to camp with us, or the boys would never believe we found a skeleton in the cave.”
Jim White’s proposal brought a hesitant question from the Kid.
“How we take it?”
“Oh, we’ll put it in the bag with the grub”, Jim replied.
The groceries had been the Kid’s responsibility, till then. Firmly, immediately he told Jim White: “Then you carry it!” Jim did. Sometime later a doctor in Carlsbad borrowed the skull to examine it. Someone borrowed it from him, and that one in turn loaned it to someone else, until eventually all trace of it was lost … a most unfortunate eventuality, since the skull would have been among the most treasured of the cave-souvenirs in Jim White’s collection.
Jim finally deduced that the skeleton was all that remained of some Indian who wandered into the cave out of curiosity, even as Jim himself had done. Failing to find the way out, the Indian must have starved there on the ledge. Cowboy White was often heard to muse that this Indian must have been an unusually brave Red Man, for it is known that Indians feared darkness and the unknown above all else. That might be the logical explanation for the fact that there was never found any trace of Indian habitation within the cavern, even though small groups lived in the vicinity. An Indian cooking-pit can still be seen near the cavern entrance, beside the present flagpole.
Other skeletons were found by Jim White, though none had the spectacular thrill for him engendered by that first sight of a frame-work of a man.
With all their excitement to feed their interest, Jim and his youthful companion might have stayed longer than three days, but for an untoward event which Jim would describe:
“I had the oil for our torches. It was in a gallon can … the can in a gunny-sack slung over my shoulder. The can started leaking and my clothes were soaking up kerosene.... Before long my back was sore and burning, so I was planning to stop as soon as we got off the ledge we were crawling on at the time. Wanted to fix my back, the best I could in there. But the Kid, crawling along behind me, brought his torch too near my back. The next instant, I was hanging on a narrow shelf of rock, my clothes blazing, and a gallon can of oil on my back!”
If he hung there on the ledge, he would burn to death. If he let go, he’d be dashed to pieces on the rocks below. If he threw the can away, they’d be left without oil for the torches on the trip from the cavern—if he lived long enough to start that journey!
There was only one thing to do—and Jim White did it. He scooted across that ledge like a cat after a bird. At the first level spot, he threw the oil-can down and slapped his big cowboy sombrero over it. The Kid followed from the ledge, and while Jim smothered the flames from the oil-can with his hat and made fervent prayers that the can would not explode, the Kid skinned out of his own coat, pressing it around Jim’s shoulders! Quick thinking bolstered intuition, and the fire was out very quickly, but not before the heat had gone through Jim’s leather vest, blistering very badly. The hair was burned from the back of his head. Arms and hands were painfully burned.
Urgent need for treatment and bandages stopped the two-man exploration of the cavern, leaving much to be learned—much to be imagined—much to be told after three wonderfilled days of wandering.