Fort Piute and Hansen Mine

3 The Tall, the Short, the Skinny, the Fat, The Good and the Bad
It has been a hard time for me since yesterday. I had written this story and then instead of going into the cloud to be stored, which thing I don’t completely understand, it went into the ground, I suppose into a grave-yard that had been prepared for all documents that are accidently destroyed and don’t make it into the cloud. I will do my best to recreate the stories.
The two trips were fun and exciting while at the same time being quite different. The older Scouts had moved on and it made it a lot easier for the rest, including me. At this time, we had two twelve-year-old Scouts join the troop. I will not name them because they may now be friends, but I doubt it. One came from a wealthy family. Both of his parents were doctors in the community. The other one came from a one parent family that the father had passed away and his widowed mother was trying to keep her family taken care of.
The one who had, as it appeared, all of the advantages, was the one who was to come up with most of the shenanigans, and the other boy was to become the brunt of most all of the jokes and unkindness that can be played out on an individual.
The mine was an exciting place to be. We had all been told to bring our flashlights, and most of us did. We thought that we were really lucky that the owner of the mine was a member of the Church, and a close friend of our Scoutmaster and my father who was the bishop. He would allow our ward Scouts to come to his mine and look around. We all took off into the mine in pairs. There were some who did not bring a flashlight with them, so we were divided up and we went into the mine in pairs. It was a little scary. I was very apprehensive, that means scared, to go into the mine, but I also wanted to see what it was like inside. It was kind of exciting. Two of those put together were the one with what seemed to be everything and the one that had been the brunt of many of the jokes.
Partway along the tunnel there was a mine shaft. Some had passed it already, but I was further back. When the two with the one flashlight got to where the tunnel turned a little, the one with the flashlight turned it off, and there was total darkness for the two of them. Then he stepped to the side and pushed the other Scout into the shaft. The shaft went down about fifty feet to the bottom. Luckily there was a small ledge about eight feet down, and he landed on it and did not go down the rest of the way. The Scout I was with ran back to get a rope and I stayed there with my flashlight. There was a lot of yelling and the Scouts ahead of us came back, and when the rope arrived, we had him tie it around him, and we all pulled him out.
We all became the Scout’s best friend and started protecting him from the pranks and downright meanness of the Scout who had pushed him down the shaft. I couldn’t imagine what I would have said to his mother if we had to bring his body back to her. From then on, we all looked out the best we could for him.
Fort Piute: Used by permission from Tales from the Desert
We then went on down the road to a place called Fort Piute. The early settlers had built a small fort out of rock to protect the water hole. It was the only water on the trail from Las Vegas, Nevada to southern California. Only about one or two feet of the walls were still intact. There was plenty of room to run and play. There was a little stream that ran into a pool. I think the idea was to protect it from the Indians. This is kind of strange because it belonged to them before the pioneers arrived to build a fort. It was nice and cool and there were a number of large trees around the little pool that the stream ran in and out of. Sometimes it takes something dangerous and possible deadly to happen before we begin to look at things with a somewhat different attitude.  

https://www.talesfromthedesert.com/portfolio/fort-piute/

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