Drifting West: The Calamities of James West and Charles Baker (review)

2??8Book Reviews81 make despite having received (onJanuary 30, 1886) a tiireatening message: Unless proceedings were dropped against a number of men indicted for cattle rustling, he (Fountain) would never reach home alive. As Recko clearly lays out, Fountain had been at Lincoln where he helped to bring thirty-two indictments against twenty-three men, two of whom (William McNew and Oliver Lee) figured prominendy in the mystery of Fountain's disappearance. On February 1, 1886, Fountain and his son left Lincoln for Mesilla but disappeared near White Sands. Search parties managed to locate Fountain's buckboard and a trail but no bodies. The bulk of Murder on the White Sands examines the investigation into the Fountains' disappearance by Pat Garrett and John Fraser, Pinkerton National Detective Agency operatives. In total, thirty-nine individuals were named as possible suspects or conspirators, with Lee, Gililland, McNew, and Fall leading die list. Recko's narrative is weakened primarily because it relies on newspaper accounts to piece together the trial due to the loss of trial transcripts. Recko saves the best for last, summarizing what he believes was each individual 's involvement in the disappearance. The author concludes that while Fall's alibi held up, he might have been the mastermind behind the disappearance. Recko states that it was no surprise that Lee and Gililland were acquitted, since the defense had outperformed the prosecutors, whose witnesses were either missing or had developed "faulty memory." However, the author reveals a statement by Gililland which possibly implicates him in the disappearance of the Fountains. In 1937 the acquitted former cattle thief declared that a grave in the San Andreas held "a lot of secrets." At times the book seems disjointed and difficult to follow; however, Recko performs an overall herculean task. Anyone interested in this fascinating mystery will benefit by reading Arrell Gibson's The Life and Death of Colonel AlbertJennings Fountain (1965). Randolph AirForce Base, San Antonio, TexasR. Ray Ortensie Drifting West: The Calamities offames West and Charles Baker. By Virginia McConnell Simmons. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2007. Pp. 240. Illustrations , maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780870818745. $29.95, cloth.) This is a readable, moderately interesting, and competendy researched narrative history ofJames White and Charles Baker, two men whose contribution to Western history is a contested footnote to Western exploration. James White crossed the Grand Canyon via the Colorado River late in the summer of 1867, and was supposedly die first person to do so. He emerged from the river at CaIlville , Nevada, barely alive and with an incredible story to tell. Simmons, an amateur historian of Colorado, seeks to recount the story of White and his companion, Charles Baker, who was purportedly killed by an Indian ambush that forced White onto die Colorado River. 82Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly Unfortunately for the author, her subject is neither new—a half-dozen books and articles have been published on it in die last several decades—nor truly useful to historians, as she presents no new information or interpretations in diis volume. In fact, she refuses even to take a position on White's disputed descent down the Colorado River. The purpose ?? Drifting West is to tell die story of these two nomadic Americans on the make in die mid-nineteenth-century West. James West's rambling adventures across the West make the most interesting portions of diis book. This book is a mostly chronological narrative of White and Baker's adventures . The first chapter begins widi the party of four men (which included George Strove and Joe Goodfellow) in search of mining claims in Colorado in 1867. Baker, who had been seeking his fortune in the state since the start of die decade, was a charismatic, ambitious self-promoter who never found success in the mines. James White met up with Baker seven years after leaving his home of Wisconsin, having been pushed west by the economic troubles brought about by die Panic of 1857. White had ventured across the West, joined a wagon train in i860, and visited mining regions in Colorado and Nevada. Hejoined die Union army and served in a cavalry unit in California and die Southwest, was found guilty of coffee...