DD, Try asking an intelligent question first. I suppose you must be the kind of person that would send his friends and neighbours and loved ones out to the place where Wiser was killed by the Apache and just for entertainment? A goose chase that is still only hearsay through and through. Waltz didn't tell you anything; you read volumes of hearsay and have yet to sort much if any of it out. You even appear to be adding some of your own? See how it works? Cows stay near to where the water is and don't stray far from it. Hard working burros need regular water. The mine blacksmith needs a steady supply of water to continue sharpening & hardening drill points and pick heads. Constant maintenance of the shoes on the animals also requires water. Pasture is required to feed the herd. Lots of water needed. Can you understand that?
What you are building a story on is all hearsay and where you are on the path is no different than anywhere else in that mountain range. Anyone who has any experience at all in the desert knows that it is next to impossible to cross the desert mountains without general confusion due to one canyon or the next looking nearly identical, one from the other crossing ravines and boulders and tributaries.
To boil it down, due to the mass quantity of hearsay, coming from a variety of sources, over different time periods and all of it hearsay to begin with when each and every one of them caught wind of it, what you end up with is still just hearsay. The persons most likely to write books through all of this are individuals who looked over and over again, each person in a different area, never finding anything conclusive or similar to ore, yet the story just keeps getting richer and richer until it becomes legend with little or no context from the original works; even so that is even hearsay to start with. The maps may be in some sort of pieced together dot to dot puzzle format, but they are still your best shot at finding the Peraltas in the wilderness. They were good at it and no fools to boot.
Most intelligent, inquiring minds what to know if there is any evidence to show that the maps of sorts are in anyway genuine. The reason for this is because if so, each individual is able to gaze into the picture as it tells it all and hearsay is eliminated like a fart in the wind.
Find the Peraltas and you will find the mine. Use the maps and eliminate the guess work. Think of how they were raised from kids, how they played, what they learned about the desert and livestock as they watched their uncles. These were real people to realize and then use the common sense that God gave you and see what happens. Where do the maps lead to? What realities stand firm in the desert? Those concerning man and beast; gold and sign pertaining to pure. That in itself is unknown due to the fact that it is so rare that no one even knows what it really runs in other than the pink quartz that can't even be found in the first place.
Once you have Shinola in one hand, the rest should be self explanatory in reference to the other that is scratching your back.
slurp.
