The Project Gutenberg EBook of Down the Mother Lode, by Vivia Hemphill This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Down the Mother Lode Author: Vivia Hemphill Release Date: February 12, 2009 [EBook #3315] Last Updated: March 15, 2018 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOWN THE MOTHER LODE *** Produced by David A. Schwan, and David Widger
“'49”
“We have worked our claims,
We have spent our gold,
Our barks are astrand on the bars;
We are battered and old,
Yet at night we behold
Outcroppings of gold in the stars.
Where the rabbits play,
Where the quail all day
Pipe on the chaparral hill;
A few more days,
And the last of us lays
His pick aside and is still.
We are wreck and stray,
We are cast away,
Poor battered old hulks and spars!
But we hope and pray,
On the judgment Day,
We shall strike it, up in the stars.
—Joaquin Miller.
“On that broad stage of empire won,
Whose footlights were the setting sun;
Whose flats a distant background rose
In trackless peaks of endless snows;
Here genius bows, and talent waits
To copy that but One creates.”
—Bret Harte.
Now-a-days when you want to go from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada
country you step into your perfectly good Packard (or whatever it is—all
the way down to a motorcycle side car), and you ferry across the bay and
the straits, and if the motor-cop isn't around, you come shooting up the
highway forty miles an hour, and at the end of a glorious five-hour run
you are there.
In the early fifties—when there was less to see, too—you took
more time to it. You came to Sacramento on the river boat. Then if you
were rich, you bought a horse or a mule and rode for the rest of your
journey. If you were poor, or thrifty perhaps, you walked, or tried to get
a ride on one of the ox-freight teams which plied their way across Haggin
Grant to Auburn and Dutch Flat, or to Folsom and Coloma.
Later a railway was built as far as Auburn station, then situated at a
point three miles east of Loomis which was at that time called Pino.
Nothing remains of Auburn station. But the road bed of the old railway is
still to be found in certain wooded tracts which have not given way to the
fruit ranches; and the highway from Fair Oaks into Folsom follows the old
cuts and grades for several miles.
In the days preceding and immediately following the discovery of gold in
California, building was very difficult. Every stick of lumber in my
grandfather's house came by ship “around the Horn,” and the fruit trees
grape vines, flowers, even bees, for his lovely garden: were all sent from
Europe.
In the smaller settlements there was seldom more than one large building
which could be used for social purposes, and this was often the card room
or bar room in connection with the hotel of the town.
So here is the tale that was told of one Sunday in Stinson's bar room, in
the late '50s at Auburn Station:
They tried to give a ball once a year at Stinson's. Persons came to it
from 30 miles about, particularly if they were women, and every woman
divided each dance among four men. When a man invited a lady to come to a
dance, in many instances he insisted upon the privilege of buying her a
silken gown and slippers to wear, and this was not considered unusual, nor
was she in any way obligated to him for it. There were so few “ladies”
that they were treated as little short of divinities.
This Saturday night there had been no dance, and the men at Gentleman
Jack's table at Stinson's had played “three-card monte” on through the
dawn and the sunrise, and into broad daylight. The door was pushed open,
letting in a rush of cool, sweet air which guttered the candles set in old
bottles, and drove the heavy fog of tobacco smoke toward the blackened
ceiling. A voice boomed forth:
“Come on, now, gentlemen. Two ladies have come with posies in tall silver
vases and a white altar cloth for this table. The preacher's coming over
from Folsom, and there will be church held here in one hour. He's a busy
man today. An infant will be given a license to travel the long and
uncertain road to heaven, and a pair of happy lovers will be made one.”
“One—unhappy pair.”
“It's William Duncan. He's intoxicated again,” drawled Gentleman Jack,
stretching his graceful length and smiling at a long, aristocratic figure
crouched over a small table in a corner. “His last strike turned out to be
only a small pocket, and so he drowns his woes in liquor, as usual.” He
bowed to his recent card partners. “Gentlemen, I am sincerely sorry for
your losses this night. I shall sleep an hour before the holy man
arrives.” He sauntered out, stuffing a buckskin bag of gold dust into his
pocket.
“There lies my pocket—in his pocket,” muttered Duncan. “No, Stinson”
raising his voice authoritatively, “I shall not go out. It is my desire to
pray for my sins today * * * and there has a letter come from overseas
which I must read—if I can. If I can—”
In an hour the room was cleared of smoke, greasy cards, poker chips and
empty bottles. The bar was in a small room apart. The poker table,
supplemented with a box, was covered with a handsome altar cloth flanked
by huge silver candlesticks and vases which had been carried across the
plains. Every individual in the community came to church and stayed
afterward for the christening. At least twenty men expressed a wish to be
god-father to the baby and the proud mother accepted all offers. When the
christening was over, William Duncan lurched to his feet, his high-bred
face full of tenderness, his long-fingered, fine grained hands poised over
the rosy child, while he quoted:
“May time who sheds his blight o'er all, And daily dooms some joy to
death. O'er thee let years so gently fall, They shall not crush one flower
beneath!”
“Ah, 'here comes the bride!' 'All the world's a stage!' Let us on with the
next scene,” and he reeled back to his little table in the corner.
The kissing and congratulations after the wedding were interrupted by the
shouts of a man on horseback, and riding hard.
“Where's the minister? Send for Doc Miller! That beast of a Mexican horse
thief—he' shot Jim Muldoon down at Dolton's Bar. Jim caught he's
stealing his horse and I'm afraid the dirty greaser's killed him. We got
'im, though, before he skipped. Somebody go down to Rattlesnake for Doc
Miller. They're bringing 'em both here.”
When Doc Miller saw Muldoon stretched on the barroom table, the same table
which a few minutes before had served as an altar he shook his head.
“He will be gone in half an hour,” he said. The men standing about began
taking off their hats.
“I wish to write home,” whispered Muldoon. The young mother handed her
baby to its father and seizing pencil and paper, ran forward. The minister
opened his prayer book at the service for the dying.
When that service had been read, and what had been Muldoon carried away to
be made ready for the last sleep, only the minister and the tall
Englishman were left in the bar-room.
“In the midst of life we are in death,” muttered Duncan.
“True,” rebuked the other “so live well the life which the Lord, thy God,
hath provided thee.” Will Duncan laughed aloud.
“It is too late, Man-o'-God! There is no place in the world for a younger
son.” The minister had not heard. He sprang toward the open window,
calling:
“Wait! It is written—'Thou shalt not kill!' Bring him in, like just
and honest men, for a hearing. He may be a horse thief and a murderer but
you shall take the rope from his neck and he shall speak in his own
defense before he goes to his Maker.”
So a hearing was given (although grudgingly, and with audible grumbling)
by the friends of Muldoon across the table which had so lately been his
bier, but in the end they took the Mexican out for the short-cut to
retribution.
Two hours later, around the same table was solemnized the funeral service
of Jim Muldoon. The minister would not return for six weeks. It must be
held at once. Gentleman Jack gave a suit of finest black broadcloth for a
shroud, and the little bride, keeping one flower from her wedding bouquet,
placed the rest in the dead man's hands. She kissed him softly on his
forehead, whispering through her tears. “For the ones at home who loved
you,” and stood watching as six men carried him away to the tiny cemetery
under the trees on a hill.
Vesper services were over and the weary minister and his congregation had
gone before Duncan found courage to open and read his letter. His elder
brother, heir to the title and great houses and landed estates of his
family, had been killed in the hunting field and he, being next in line,
was to come home to succeed to the position.
He, William—Duncan—Claibourne—Earl of—but no, his
family name had never been told in California.
Portions of the services he had heard that day drifted through his mind:
“Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he
shall not enter therein. * * * We do sign him with the sign of the cross
in token hereafter that he shall manfully fight against the sin, the
world, and the devil; and to continue Christ's faithful soldier unto his
life's end.” So, the child starting on his earthly journey with the
minister's blessing and the backing of twenty god-fathers!
The holy old church service which he had heard at home in stately English
cathedrals—the nuggets in the contribution plate—the radiant
bride who had come across the plains to hear “Dearly Beloved, We are
gathered together,” standing beside the man she loved. The service for the
dying: “When we shall have served thee in our generation we may be
gathered unto our Fathers, having the testimony of a good conscience, the
confidence of a certain faith, in favor with Thee our God, and in perfect
charity with the world.” So, Jim Muldoon, cut down before his time, and
his slayer out there in the darkness on the end of a rope.
The dying candle picked out in flame a withered cabbage rose under the
table; a baby's mitten, the letter written for the man who had died, the
Mexican's sombrero on a chair, the gilt sun and moon and stars on the
glass face of the grandfather clock by the window.
Duncan's head fell forward in his clasped arms on the table, and in his
dreams he heard the huntsman's silver horn from across the seas calling
him home to carry on the destiny of the ancient and honorable name which
was his. His “strike of pay ore” in his “land of gold.”
The candle wick in a shallow pool of tallow flared high, and went out.
The old clock chimed twelve.
“You smile, O poet, and what do you?
You lean from your window and watch life's column
Trampling and struggling through dust and dew,
Filled with its purposes grave and solemn;
An act, a gesture, a face—who knows?
And you pluck from your bosom the verse that grows,
And down it flies like my red, red rose,
And you sit and dream as away it goes,
And think that your duty is done—now, don't you?”
—Bret Harte.
In the early days it was called the Mountaineer House. Now it is
colloquially known as the “stone house,” and has for sixty years been the
home of the Owen King family. It is surrounded today by one of the most
beautiful orchards in the foothills. Wide verandahs of the native gray
granite to match the old house itself have been added. It is electrically
lighted and furnace heated, modern in every way, yet still the romance of
former times seems to cling to its sturdy old walls.
All that remain unchanged are three huge trees flanking the highway in
front. What tales they could tell, if they would, of what passed by the
junction of two roads beneath them. Of the long and weary caravans from
across the plains crawling up from the bridge at Whiskey Bar, below
Rattlesnake, glad that their six months' struggle was nearly over: of
horsemen on beautiful Spanish horses riding furiously, whither no one knew
nor dared ask; of dark deeds in the old stone house below, that was so
inscrutably quiet by day and so mysteriously alive by night; of ghastly
doings by the Tom Bell gang which ranged all the way from the Oregon
border to the southern lakes.
They will never tell all they know—these big old trees—of
those who went in by the door and “came out by the cellar” of Tom Bell's
stronghold. In the end the place fell, in the war between order and
lawlessness and, as the pessimists love to assert, a woman, as usual, was
the cause of it. The tale is told:
Rosa Phillips sat in the Mountaineer House strumming a Spanish guitar, and
singing,
“There's a turned down page, as some writer says, in every human life, A hidden story of happier days, of peace amidst the strife. A folded down leaf which the world knows not. A love dream rudely crushed, The sight of a face that is not forgot. Although the voice be hushed.”She rose and stood at a window, holding the dusty curtain aside with one white hand and peering cautiously forth into the dusk. A horse was galloping up the Folsom road. The horseman was near—was under the trees in front—was past—and gone down the river road without slackening his animal's rapid gait. “He does not stop at the Mountaineer House these days,” said Tom Bell's sneering voice at her elbow. “There is a new actress at the opera house in Rattlesnake.” The woman's dark eyes flashed, but she answered evenly enough: “He does not stop, the handsome Dick, so you, senor, have not the cause to be jealous. Is it not so?” “Cause? Why, you Spanish jade, you've never been the same to me since Rattlesnake Dick came prowling back from Shasta county to his old haunts in Placer.” Rosa's thin, red lips curled. “Senor, I am what it pleases me to be.” “And Jack Phillips permits you to be!” She shrugged her slender shoulders. “He wearies me. Life—this place—wearies me.” “Yes, and I weary you, too—now. Plain as day, it is.” The Phillips woman smiled (she seldom laughed) and there was only cruelty in her smile—no kindliness, no womanly softness of any sort. “My friend, soon there will be no 'you.' The night is coming and there will be no sunrise.” A man dismounted at the gate and led his horse past the window to the stables in the cellar. He walked with a curious, halting pace. “There's Jim Driscoll back already. Must bring news,” said Bell, leaving her hurriedly, and so neglecting to ask the meaning of her cryptic remark. Rosa slipped in behind the bar, late that evening, beautifully gowned, and with her dark hair dressed high. Her vivid face glowed like a scarlet poppy and was bright with smiles. Three or four men in the crowded bar-room rose to their feet and drank to her bright eyes and strolled across to the bar. “Soon now,” she whispered, “I shall sweep out the lights. Those two who have just entered—who are they?” She went across the room to the newcomers. “The senors may pay me for the drinks, if they desire,” she said to them, meaningly. “La Rosita shall take what pleases her,” one of them laughed. Among the handful of coins and small nuggets he brought from his pocket was a bullet strung on a bit of dirty twine. “Ah! a love token, senor?” “Yes, from the throat of Betsy Jane” (a term often used for a rifle). “In twenty minutes, my friends, there will be opened a chute into purgatory for all who are in this bar room. Your 'love token' names you Senor Bell's men. Before then you will seek the rear of the room—eh?” She drifted away from them to pause at a small table where sat a young man alone. “And you, pretty fellow, you are new in California?” “Yes, I landed in San Francisco only ten days ago.” He was new indeed, or he would have realized the danger of telling his business to the first person who asked. “You go far, senor?” “Not now. I have come far, but my journey is near to a very happy ending.” “So?” “Yes. I have come to marry Miss Elena Ashley, at Auburn, to whom I have been long betrothed.” She tapped her white teeth with her fan. “And yet you linger at Mountaineer House?” “Horses are expensive, and I am not rich. I walked. I was tired. I saw you in your garden, and you are very beautiful.” Rosa's capricious vanity was touched. The whim seized her to save this exuberant young bridegroom from the fate before him. “Do you see that peddler—old Rosenthal—close to the bar? He brought in a large and rich pack tonight. It lies in the next room. Do you go there at once. I will come soon, and together we will select a gift for your bride. Go quickly!” She passed again behind the bar. Jack Phillips was at one end, lame Jim Driscoll at the other, Tom Bell in the middle. Rosa paused near a branching candelabra which had once graced the altar of a Spanish church. “Is Jose below?” whispered Bell. She nodded. “Why did you save that boy, just now? A new lover?” She directed upon him a level glance of hate. “I do what pleases me, senor.” She raised her arm high, beginning the first stamping measure of a Spanish dance. Instantly there was a curious rumbling noise in the stable underneath. Rosa swept over the candelabra. All the lights in the place were struck out. Phillips and Driscoll slipped two great bolts, and the entire bar-room floor swung downward on hinges. The chute to purgatory was open! There was bedlam in that dank pass to the region of shades, and no quarter was shown to any man; only cries of “The String! The String!” from members of the gang in order to distinguish the robbers from the robbed, in the darkness. There were curses, the kicking and squealing of horses in their stalls; a verse from the Talmud recited in Yiddish (which suddenly stopped), and above it all the high and hysterical laugh of a woman. The boy turned from the peddler's pack as Rosa entered the room. “What is that horrible noise?” “A fight. Come, you had better go.” She led him down a dark stair to another section of the cellar. “Jose,” she called. An evil looking Mexican pushed open a rough door. “You shall take this man out through the second tunnel.” “Si, senora.” “And, Jose, he shall reach the outer opening alive, and with all his belongings. He has no money. Do you hear?” Jose grunted. “Go, now, under, cover of the noise.” “But the gift for Elena!” Rosa laughed mockingly. “What a child it is! My gift to Elena tonight, is you—her lover. Ask her to thank me with a prayer from her pure heart for my sins.” Jose led the young man through a long, damp, evil-odored passage underground, and out through a trapdoor at the extreme end of the garden. A shrub grew on top of the door, surrounded by a bed of fragrant wild pansies. Jose kicked the staring youth away from the entrance and vanished into the earth looking, in the lantern-light like a malevolent fiend returning to the realm of everlasting fire.
“He goes to the well,
And he stands on the brink,
And stops for a spell
Jest to listen and think:
Let's see—well, that forty-foot grave wasn't his, sir,
that day, anyhow.”
—Bret Harte.
Everywhere in the foothills of the Sierras there are still evidences of
gold mining. High cliffs face the rivers, all that is left of hills torn
down at the point of the powerful hydraulic nozzles, with great heaps of
cobbles at their base which Mother Nature, even in seventy years has been
unable to change or cover.
At the mouth of nearly every ravine there are countless little mounds
which marked the end, or dump of the sluice-box in the placer mining. When
the mound got the proper height the sluice was simply lengthened, like
putting another joint onto a caterpillar—and there you were! The
sluice-boxes have long since been moved away or rotted to mould but the
little mounds remain, to be mansions for hustling colonies of small black
ants.
The country, in various localities, is pitted with prospect holes, and the
hills are pierced with drift tunnels and abandoned mines. Some of the
prospect holes are mere grassy cups, others are very deep and partly
filled with water.
Some of the most engrossing days of my childhood were spent in exploring
these places with my two boy companions. We would fell an oak sapling
across the mouth of the hole, tie a rope, usually my pony's lariat, to the
tree and slide down it to explore the depths below. If we came to a side
drift we would swing into it, light our candle-lanterns and go looking for
gold. We were always sure that we should yet find a forgotten cache of
gold—perhaps guarded by a lonely skeleton—but we never did!
About all we ever got out of it was snake-frights (naturally, sans
alcoholic origin), until we were sure, the snakes were not rattlers; baby
bats, which invariably tried to bite us; swallows' eggs, wet feet, and a
good spanking if the family happened to find out what we had been up to.
I suppose that it really was a very dangerous pastime, for although
sometimes the drift tunnel led us to a sunlit opening on the hillside,
more often we reached a blind end and were forced to return to the main
shaft and to “shin” up the rope, with from ten to forty feet of inky water
waiting to catch us if we fell.
Or we went up the river to “swing the rocker” for old Ali Quong. He always
pretended to drive us away, bellowing fiercely as soon as he caught sight
of us, “Whassa malla you? Alle time you come see Ali Quong! Ketchem too-oo
much tlouble for po-or old Chinaman”—the whole time with his
wrinkled, brown face wreathed in smiles.
There we stayed the long summer afternoon, swinging the rocker while Quong
shoveled in the pebbly dirt, watching him take the black sand, which held
the gold, off the canvas with his little spade-like scoop, and panning it
for him in the heavy iron pan, fascinated to see what we should find.
Usually only a few small nuggets in a group of colors (flake gold), but
once we found a good sized nugget which Quong gallantly gave me for a
“Chinese New Year” gift. At dusk he sent us home, each with a bar of brown
barley sugar—smelling to the blue of opium—which he fished out
of one of his numerous jumpers with his long-fingered, sensitive hands.
They are dead, long ago—Ah Quong, old Sing, Shotgun-Chinaman—and
gone to the blessed region of the Five Immortals, I know, but every true
Californian will understand the regard the pioneer families had for these
faithful Chinese servitors who took as much loving pride in the
aristocratic and unblemished names of their “familees” as the white
persons who bore them. Four generations of my family, old Sing lived to
serve—but I must get on with my forty-niner's tale of the hanging of
Charlie Price!
“Eh, mon, but the spring is here again,” said Jim “Hutch” (Hutchinson) to
Old Man Greeley.
“Is it so, now?” returned the little man, gazing off through the sunny,
velvet air to a world which had been painted clean, new green. His shrewd,
blue eyes returned to the ponderous Scotchman.
“And how came you to realize that it was spring?” he asked maliciously.
“How came you to lick Sandy McArthur-r-r?” Hutchinson came back at him.
“Tell me that.”
“Well, but whisper, man,” said old Jimmie plaintively, “what else could a
man be after doin'? Me boots were on, an' I could not run away an' climb a
tree, so I used them on McArthur.”
“Ye're a wild fightin' Irishman with no regard for the Sabbath,” returned
Jim Hutch, sternly. Now Greeley had a fear of what the dour old Scotchman
might tell upon him. It would not pay to lose his Celtic temper.
“It was to church I was goin'.” he growled. “'Twas why I was wearin' me
red-topped high boots.”
“Where was church that day, whatever? At the Widow Schmitt's?”
Jimmie squirmed. “You mentioned the beautiful spring, I mind,” he
countered deftly. Suddenly Jim Hutch grinned.
“I'll tell ye why. I was gaein' down frae Rattlesnake this afternoon an'
Charlie Price an' his Leezie were out in his bit garden a-plowin'. Mon, ye
could hear him for miles!”
It was even so. Old Charlie Price had decided that it was high time to put
in his vegetable garden. He went out to the lean-to in his corral to
inform Lizzie, the mare, of his intention. Lizzie was always the unwilling
partner of these agricultural peregrinations, and, now she saw him
approaching with the harness, she ran away with much snorting and
scattering of sod.
“Hey, you, Liz,” roared Charlie, “you goot-for-not'ing buckskin lummix,
you com mit!” He flourished the halter rope at her. Lizzie flattened her
ears, opened her mouth like a yawning snake, and ran at him. Old Charlie
let out a whoop that brought the sheriff from Rattlesnake at full speed,
and could be heard (so they say) all the way across the river to Wild
Goose Flat, six miles away.
Even Lizzie, accustomed as she was to Charlie's mannerisms, was frankly
startled and meekly allowed herself to be caught. She did not like to
plow. She was a saddler and a pair of tugs and a collar bored her. With a
cinch one could puff out in true wild-horse fashion while the latigo strap
was being pulled, and afterward be fairly comfortable, but a slipping
collar was neither off nor on. She shook herself impatiently and the
collar slid down her neck to her ears.
“Hey!” bellowed Charlie, “you don't vear it so! You—” The mare
stamped at a fly, bringing her hoof down on the old Dutchman's foot. His
blood-curdling whoops and yells brought the sheriff in on a brilliant
finale to a record-breaking run.
“What's the matter? Are you being murdered?”
“Who, I'm?” asked Charlie, absent-mindedly. He was nursing the injured
member, wondering whether to kick at Lizzie with it, knowing full well
that he stood a good chance of her kicking back again' but when she
snapped viciously at the puffing sheriff he decided against it.
“You com' to see me?” he asked, in a bland, so-glad-you've-called tone.
“To see you! Why, I've come to save your life!”
“So? Dot's goot, but Lizzie undt me, ve ain't got so much time today. It's
vegetables I sell in Rattlesnake undt ve go to plow, now.”
“Well, you old fool, after this you can call in vain if anything happens
to you. I'll never bother with you.”
“Oh, vell, ven I got a little excitement I got to yell about it, ain't
it?”
“Maybe you have—and after this you can, for all of me,” and the
wrathful sheriff departed. He was new in the community or he would have
known that the plowing of Charlie Price and Lizzie was a regular event of
each season, for which an audience gathered to lay bets for and against
the probability of his dying of apoplexy before it was finished.
The plowing progressed in this manner:
Charlie put the point of the plow in the soft earth and roared at the
motor-power. Lizzie started off at a nimble lope. The plow cut a pretty
curve and flew out of the ground. Charlie reefed the reins at once,
completely turning off the power. Then he put the reins about his neck,
grasped the handles of the plow with both hands, and zoomed commands again
at the champing power. “Power” jumped ahead. The reins nearly snapped old
Charlie's head off, but effectually brought the mare to a standstill.
“Vait, you dunder-undt-blitzen apful peelings! You—you think dot
plowing is not high-toned enough, yet—hey? Vell, I show you!”
He picked up a huge clod of soft dirt held it aloft in both hands and
banged it down on Lizzie's back—whereupon she promptly ran away! She
galloped furiously to the end of the field with the plow banging in scoops
and leaps, and old Charlie, dangling on the end of the reins, flying along
in seven-league jumps behind her. As soon as he caught his breath
sufficiently for renewed directions, the cavalcade returned to the
grandstand and operations were repeated.
Charlie had been a sailor before he came to California, and he plowed (?)
each furrow with a collection of forceful admonitions, delivered in a
voice of thunder, from a different language. It was all the same to
Lizzie! She loathed plowing just as thoroughly in wildcat Spanish, as she
did in Dutch or Cingalese, and she did not hesitate to prove it.
Jim Hutch and Jimmie Greeley drifted down to Rattlesnake at sundown and
joined the laughter-weakened group perched upon Charlie's snake fence.
“The man grows more daft every year. 'Tis strange, what charms the Widow
Schmitt.” Old Jimmie merely growled in his beard. “Charlie, mon,” he
called, “the mare is warm and weary, and so's yoursel'. Come on to town
for a bit.”
Charlie stayed overlong at the miners' haunts in Rattlesnake and it was
very late when he started back to his cabin, carrying in one limp, hot
hand a jug which he guarded zealously from harm during his unsteady
progress.
The men still sat over the card tables when the first daylight crept over
the mountains. Jimmie Greeley was raking in a jackpot, grinning fiendishly
at the dour Jim Hutch when they heard heavy, running feet outside. The
door crashed open and a frightened, half-grown lad shouted:
“Where's the sheriff? Charlie Price has been hung!”
“What!”
“On a tree near the Widow Schmitt's. I saw him. I know well the sailor
coat that he wears—and his best red-topped boots. Where's the
sheriff?”
“Over at Ah Quong's, the Chinee store on the edge of town.” The boy ran
off. Old Jim Hutch rose impressively to his feet.
“Friends, the man ye hae laughed at all day—is dead. The man ye hae
always laughed at—and yet, WHO was it that lent ye gold when ye had
none? Yea, the gold ye thought it not worth ye'r while to return. Who was
ever ready to warm you at his bit fire in winter or to cool ye're
whuskey-hot throat with water from his cool spring in summer?
“Who was it that brought his mare into his own kitchen when it snowed, and
fed her the rice and beans he went without? Who was it that the Widow
Schmitt waits for year after year, with half the ould fools in Placer
dancin' after her?”
That was too much for old man Greeley.
“Because he was indifferent-like. When ye want a woman, run away f-r-r-om
her and she'll run after.”
“Why did ye na do it, then, Jeems?”
“Faith an' I did, but bein' ahl dressed up as I was in me coat, she
couldn't see me suspenders to tell was I comin' or goin'!” Jim Hutch
turned from him witheringly.
“Who was it staked ye for a new prospectin' trip, an' let his own mine go
unworked? Who nursed ye when ye were lyin' seeck unto death, an' no one
would come nigh on account of the smallpox scare? Old Charlie Price.”
A boy whirled about to face the window, but not before one uncontrollable
sob had sounded through the quiet room.
“Who was it,” went on the old Scotchman gently, “found the wee bairn that
was lost, last summer; that followed the Indians for thirty miles on his
Leezie-mare and got the babe from out the wickiup of White Beaver? Charlie
Price.
“Who came bringing it haeme laughing, on the saddle pommel while he sang
to it songs from ower seven seas, which we did blush to hear, in a voice
to be heard twa miles about? And 'twas only the bairn's mother who thought
to thank him.
“Yea, and furthermore, when the incensed people would hae wipet out the
while tribe of White Beaver, who dashed at the mob wi' the roars of a
bull-bison forcin' them to hear that the squaw was crazed from the death
of her own bit bairn, and but tryin' to comfort her sore heart? Who, I'm
askin' ye?” and from each man's lips came the murmur like a response to a
litany:
“Charlie Price.”
From the open door a cool dawn breeze blew in from the Sierras, pure
forerunner to the new day. It whirled the heavy smoke plumes into forms of
vanished ghosts, like the tortured figments of each man's conscience who
had done, and “left undone” that which it was forever too late to amend.
The sheriff walked in.
“This boy says that old Charlie is gone.” He stood with his broad hat off,
running his fingers nervously through his hair. “Gentlemen—I—I
must confess—I heard the poor man calling, but—”
“Mon, in an ancient book named 'Mr. Aesop, His Fables,' there was a tale
of the lad who cried 'wolf.' Many there are here who have read it. Come,
let us gae after poor Charlie.”
In the first daylight they reached the tree with its gruesome burden.
“But—but,” sputtered the keen-eyed little Irishman, “'Tis not
Charlie at all! 'Tis but an effigy dressed in Charlie's clothes and hung
at the Widow Schmitt's gate.”
“As a warnin' to him frae some mutton-head lover of hers.”
They ran as one man across the road to Charlie's cabin. It was empty.
“He was callin' 'Help',” said the round-eyed boy.
“Yes, we heard him,” added the sheriff.
They had come up the road. They started back down the trail.
“Again swings the lash on the high mountain trail,
And the pipe of the packer is scenting the gale;
For the trails are all open, the roads are all free,
And the highwayman's whistle is heard on the lea.”
—Bret Harte.
We were riding one day under the Digger pines, down an abandoned old road
toward Mountaineer House. As usual, my spirited half-Arab, as white as she
was fleet, had put me far in the lead. She loved a race as well as I did,
but she ran it to suit herself. If I tried to interpose any theories of my
own, she calmly took the bit in her teeth and after that I devoted most of
my energies to hanging on!
Mammy Kate, own daughter of Nancy Gooch of Coloma, would scold when I came
home with torn skirt and a bump on my forehead: “Now, den, look at dat
chile! Been hoss-racin' agin su'ah as Moses was in Egypt! I shall suttenly
enjine yo' fathah to done gin' yo' plow-hoss to ride so yo's gwi' git beat
wiff yo' racin', and quit. Spects yo' had 'nothah tumble, didn't you'?
You' wait till Katie gits de camph-fire an' put on dat haid.”
So did Katie's scoldings invariably end in renewed pampering of her
“chile,” and so did I continue to race every horse in the community and
usually to win.
With one small ear laid back to listen for the other horses, little white
Flossie flew along the grassy track, darting around the chapparal bushes
which had grown up and jumping the fallen tree trunks. Suddenly we came
out of the woods and she shied violently at a man who was digging a
fence-post hole, directly in the road. I always rode Indian fashion
without stirrups of any kind, so of course I was catapulted neatly over
her head.
“Hello. Otto,” I said, remaining seated in the road and catching at Floss'
bridle rein, “what have you found?”
Otto was sifting the loose dirt in the hole through eager fingers.
“Hello! I've found some money here in the ground. I wonder—oh, yes,
I've heard my mother tell about it! This was the old pioneer road and it
was at this very spot that Rattlesnake Dick and some of his gang held up
the Wells-Fargo stage coach and got such a lot of money. They say there's
still $40,000 buried on Trinity Mountain, half of what was waiting when
Rattlesnake Dick got killed.”
Rattlesnake Dick, pirate of the placers, prince of highwaymen! Magical
name—irridescent bubble from the pipe of romance. Proud, imperious,
bitter Dick! What a splendid old name he had been born to, and what blows
Fate had dealt him which led to his tragic end!
The others had come up by this time and we sat in a circle listening again
to the story of the bold and brilliant Englishman whom two undeserved jail
sentences had turned into such a picturesque dare-devil of a highwayman.
However, I disagreed with Otto's version of the robber chief.
“But you have made him out all bad,” I told him. “I have heard the story
often, and he wasn't all bad by any means.”
“He was a wild desperado. Why, even after he was dead and lying on the
sidewalk in Auburn, a man came up and kicked his face.”
“Yes, and they say that everybody in the county was mad about it, and when
the man ran for supervisor more than a year later, no decent person would
vote for him and he lost his election.” Now, the true story of Rattlesnake
Dick is this, and I never tire of hearing it:
“Would you present me to your sister's friend, then, George?”
“Why not.”
“I am an Ishmailite! I, the son of an honorable English gentleman, have
done a term in prison.”
“But these ideas are extreme, Dick. There is no such general opinion of
you. Were you not exonerated from having stolen the wretched little Jew's
goods? It is all forgotten,” and George Taylor paused in his restless
pacing, before the long, graceful figure on the bunk against the wall.
Dick raised handsome eyes whose flashing light was made of pain.
“George, I wish—how I wish that it were forgotten. But it is not.
They whisper it in doorways, and over the card tables and down in the
drift tunnels. Wherever I go it follows me like an evil spirit, rearing
its unclean head between me and all fair things.” His deep voice reflected
the hurt in his dark eyes, and his broad shoulders drooped in despondency.
“Dick—Dick, the gay the debonair—this is not like you. Brace
up, man, and come with me to this opening of the new opera house, if only
to add to my pleasure. All the town will be there to hear the singer who
has just landed in San Francisco from Boston.”
“She it was who brought you the letter from your sister?”
“Yes, yes. They were school-mates. She is beautiful, and you shall meet
her after the concert.”
The “Opera House” was crowded, the front rows seating the leading men of
the community and their richly clad wives and daughters. In the back rows,
seated on benches and around the side walls were, the roughly dressed
miners and the usual flotsam of a mining town. The singer was not of the
hurdy-gurdy type so common in those days, but a “lady,” young, lovely and
accomplished. Her ballads were greeted with the greatest enthusiasm, and
soon the stage began to be showered with gold. The miners brought her back
again and again, calling the names of songs they wished to hear. Hundreds
of dollars of gold were tossed up to her, whilst she smilingly complied
with all their requests.
“One more,” they shouted, “only one more, and her slippers shall be filled
with gold dust.” She slipped out of her little sandals and stood, blushing
modestly, hiding her silken feet under her long, wide skirts.
“You are very kind to a lonely stranger,” she called, to an instantly
silenced audience, “and I will sing for you a song which has but lately
come from London. 'Tis from a new opera called the Bohemian Girl, composed
by Master Balfe,” and folding her little hands before her, she sang
sweetly, “Then You'll Remember Me.”
“When other lips and other hearts their tales of love shall tell Of days
that have as happy been, and you'll remember—you'll remember me.”
“Dick, why do you cover your eyes? You are surely not asleep?”
“By all the Gods, man, the accusation is an insult,” with a haughty flash
of his great eyes.
“You are to be presented; have you forgotten?”
“Forgotten! While life lasts, I shall remember this night.”
“Hush, this is the last. She is singing, 'Home, Sweet Home'.”
“Yes, 'Home,' for these wanderers from all over the earth. See how
silently they file out.”
“There is many a tear among them. They will lie, tonight on memory's couch
of sad dreams.”
“You are wrong, my friend,” said Dick bitterly; “they are more like to
hasten down to the gambling hells to kill the visions memory would
recall.”
“Those brave old bricks of forty-nine!
What lives they lived! What deaths they died!
Their ghosts are many. Let them keep
Their vast possessions. The Piute,
The tawny warrior, will dispute
No boundary with these.........
—Joaquin Miller.
High water on the American came, usually, when the first warm rains melted
the snow on the mountains.
The placer miners toiled at furious pace all during the summer and fall.
The water, then not more than a rivulet, was deflected through flumes from
the river bed, so that all the sand of the bars could be put through the
sluices.
The men worked till the last possible moment in the narrow river bed, only
leaving in time to save their lives, and abandoning everything to the
sudden rush of the water. Their sluices, logs, flumes, water-wheels, all
their mining paraphernalia, sometimes even their living outfits, were
swept away in the floods.
The river was known to rise from 20 to 60 feet in 24 hours, in its narrow
and precipitous walls.
At flood time, then, we often went down to the river through the orchard
of big old cherry trees planted by my grandfather, to watch the mass of
wreckage rushing by. Great logs would go down end over end; mining
machinery caught in the limbs of uprooted trees; quantities of lumber, and
once a miner's bunk with sodden gray blanket and a wet and frantic
squirrel upon it. I worried for days over the fate of that squirrel.
They tell the story of a Chinaman floating down upon a log.
“Hello, John, where you go?” was shouted. John shook his head, sadly.
“Me no sabe! Maybe Saclimento—maybe San Flancisco. No got time
talkee, now.”
“Be the battle lost or won,
Though its smoke shall hide the sun,
I shall find my love—the one
Born for me!”
—Bret Harte.
Names of settlements in the '49 days were often as “Rough an Ready” as the
reasons for their being!
Most of them spoke, more or less eloquently, for themselves and no man
picked by fame in glowing wise from the heterogeneous mass of persons
could hope to escape a nickname.
A miner was discovered roaming down a river bed minus his nether garments,
and lives to this day in the appellation of Shirt Tail canyon. Two men
fought. One of them lost an eye in the manner indicated by Gouge Eye.
Hundreds of wild geese were wont to gather on a sunny mesa above the
river. It made a splendid level town called Wild Goose Flat. The plains
were covered with “Antelope.” The end gate of a prairie schooner was lost
on a hill, and Tail Gate mountain came into being.
Humbug Creek panned light with gold. Red Dog, Hangtown, Round Tent Claims,
Dry Diggings, Let 'Er Rip, You Bet, Yuba Dam, One Horse Town, and Hell's
Delight shriek for themselves, or should!
This, then, is the tale of Grizzley Bob, who mined in Snake Gulch at the
foot of Bear Mountain.
“The bear made straight for me! Old Bull-doze was hangin' onto him below,
somewhere, but I dropped my Killer (gun) and grabbed my knife, 'cause I
knew if I didn't get in on him with Slasher it was all up with both of us.
Bear and I took a tight grip on each other and I hit straight for his
heart just as he gave me a swipe in the face.
“We both fell, the bear on top, and then I didn't remember anything for
awhile. When I woke I felt something heavy on my stomach, but I couldn't
see anything for blood.”
“Hu-ray!” cheered old Solly Jake, thinking the tale was finished.
Sick Jimmy, from behind the bar, prodded him good-humoredly.
“Dry up, Soll.”
“I am dry,” whimpered old Soll, “I'm dryer'n before I got drunk!”
“Here, then,” pushing a bottle across the redwood slab used for a bar,
“the drinks are on Grizzley Bob and Handsome Harry, tonight.”
“Was it such a big strike they made?”
“It sure was. Go on, Bob,” he called to the tall, magnificently built
young spokesman, “then what?”
“After awhile I managed to crawl from under that old grizzley and when I'd
wiped the one good eye that was left, I saw him lying there as stiff and
dead as a mackerel, with Slasher sticking in his heart clean up to the
handle. It was pretty near dark then, but the sun was just showing hisself
over the top of Bear mountain when I got to Rattlesnake Bill's cabin, and
you'll scarcely believe me but I didn't have enough grit left to signal
Bill I was there. I just settled down all of a heap-like and that's the
way they found me. Bill, he got a doctor from Angel's and after awhile I
pulled out all right, but I ain't been much of a beauty since. Well, what
th—,” as the door banged open to reveal an exceedingly handsome
blond youngster dragging in a cringing newcomer.
“Hi,” he called, while two frolicsome imps danced in his splendid blue
eyes. “Any of you chaps got a rope handy? Time this fellow was strung up
over a limb to be a picture for coyotes to bark at!”
“Hall, you let go, there. There'll be no chaffing a tenderfoot whilst I'm
around and you know it.”
“Who says so?” laughed Handsome Harry.
“My foppish friend,” spoke up The Senator, “the reputation of Grizzley Bob
says so. A reputation that is the terror and admiration of every mining
camp in the mountains. A dead shot, a sure thing with the knife, a heart
to succor the oppressed and often to protect the shiftless,” acridly.
“I thank you, Senator! Your species of implication is worthy the splendor
of your mighty apparel. The old swallow-tail retains its pristine glory, I
perceive, though your other habiliments have one by one yielded to the
ravages of time, and been replaced by the rough and ready garments of the
frontier. Perchance—”
“Hall, have I got to make you let go of this pore devil!” Bob's powerful
figure came forward into the full light of the huge fireplace. One-half
the face above the comely form was hideously repulsive. It had been
literally torn away and what remained was so scarred and seamed that it
scarcely bore any resemblance to a human countenance.
His one remaining eye was large, dark and glowing with kindness as he bent
over the victim of his partner's latest joke.
“Ye-ah,” drawled old Doc Smithers, precipitating a large mouthful of brown
liquid into the fireplace. “Bob, he'll pet 'im, an' that ol' bulldog o'
his'n 'ull lick im, an' next thing we know Bob'll be givin' 'im a claim,
just like he took in Handsome Harry hisself goin' on two years ago. Look
at the dandy, struttin'! Bob buys 'im all them fancy togs an' loves to see
'im wearin' 'em. White hands, an' red cheeks, an' straight nose like a
gal. Swan, ef he wasn't so ornery an' long-limbed I'd a mind to call 'im
one. Ef 'twant for his hidin' behind Bob so, I'd—”
What he'd have done was never known, for the whole room-full of prankish,
loud-voiced, roistering men was suddenly struck dumb by the unwonted sound
of a lady's voice out in the darkness.
Bull-doze reached her first, Bob next, and Handsome Harry third. She was
only a slip of a young thing and the fright she got from the kindly rush
of the old bulldog was immeasurably increased by Bob's frightful
caricature of a face. She turned, shuddering, to the handsome,
richly-decked young Englishman.
“My father and mother, sir, are very ill. I was going after a doctor, but
I am tired out. I can go no further. Oh, could one of you go on to
Angel's, whilst I rest with some lady of your town?”
Harry was apparently speechless from the thrall of her fresh young beauty,
because it was Bob who answered.
“You certainly can, Miss! Grizzley Bob's word on that. Where'd you come
from?”
“From Roundtree's, sir,” timidly. Bob had turned to call orders through
the open door and the girl gasped as the strong, manly profile of the
unscarred half of his face was turned toward her. Bull-doze licked her
white fingers, and she stooped to pat his ugly head so that the long curls
at her temple might hide her face from the look in Hal's bold eyes.
“Hey, Antelope Bill, saddle that ewe-necked cayuse of yours and vamoose,
pronto, after the doctor. Plug Hat Pete, you've got the best cabin in
town. We'll want it for the lady.”
“Help yourself, Grizzley,” answered the gambler. “It is a privilege.”
“I am to stay with Mrs.—Pete?” asked Becky, anxiously.
“Child, you're a-going to be as safe as if there was a lady in this
law-evadin' camp; which there isn't, exceptin' your own sweet and lovely
self.”
“Oh!”
“You're a-going to have old Bull-doze watchin' inside the cabin and ten
decent and sober men watchin' outside it and nothin' short of a messenger
from up-skies could touch one pretty, red-gold curl on your proud little
head.”
“Bob, I'll take her home to her mother,” spoke up Harry who had never once
taken his bold gaze from the girl.
“No, you won't take her home to her mother, neither!”
Beckey was strangely comforted by the protective drawl of the big man's
voice. Accustomed as she had grown to the rapid transitions of the West,
she realized the fallacy of her first impression from his appearance. That
night laid the foundation of her regard for him, which was deeper than a
mere surface appeal, and which was never to waver.
“On Selby Flat we live in style;
We'll stay right here till we make our pile.
We're sure to do it after a while,
Then good-bye to Californy!”
—Canfield's “Diary of a Forty-Niner.”
The beautiful Casino at Monte Carlo stands in one of the loveliest
settings on earth. Facing the blue Mediterranean and enhanced by the
exquisitely kept marble villas of Monaco, it may justly be called the acme
of gambling institutions. It has become an institution through the years.
Time has brought it stability.
Its absolute antithesis were the gambling dens of '49. Built over-night,
destined to remain if the mines were rich, and to melt away if they
pinched out, the gambling hells were sometimes the veriest makeshifts.
Canvas covered, dirt floored, except for the dancing platform, rough
red-wood bar and tables; surrounded by all the sordidness of Hurdy Gurdy
town in which fortunes, and reputations, and lives were bid, and shuffled,
and lost, as indiscriminately as grains of dust blown into the
ever-changing sea.
The thirst for gold is universal. In those half-mad days of delirious
seeking, the princeling rubbed sleeves with the scoundrel and the clod,
and each man's ability was his only protection. Fortune played no
favorites. The tale is told of the judge who drove home in his coach
through a shallow creek. Ruin faced him for the lack of a few thousand
dollars. He took out his derringer and shot himself.
Not half an hour later a Chinaman crossed the creek under his pole between
two swinging baskets. He found a nugget there which brought him over
$30,000.
This, then, is the tale of what Fortune did to Curly Gillmore.
“Judge not too idly that our toils are mean,
Though no new levies marshall on our green;
Nor deem too rashly that our gains are small,
Weighed with the prizes for which heroes fall.”
—Bret Harte.
If dancing was the first form of amusement to emanate from prehistoric
savagery, then racing must surely have come next. It may possibly have
come first. However, we shall leave the “theorizin”' to be settled by the
lips of the first mummy whose centuries-old tissues shall be roused to
full life by modern science. What has science not achieved? We have gone
beyond wonder. We can only believe, and become blase!
Meantime there is still enough red blood in the modern effete productions
of humans to enjoy a contest of stress and strain, and brain and brawn,
and to gamble upon the outcome.
In the '49 days, racing was one of the most popular forms of chance, and
it often reverted in bizarre tangents. This, then, is what happened at a
golden fiesta during the week of races:
“Sweet Lady, are all my importunities to be in vain?”
“I must confess that I can not bring my mind to a decision, Mr. Saul,”
answered Mistress Patty Laughton, blushing and curtsying prettily.
“It is surely not for your lack of worldly goods that you hesitate,”
persisted Slick-heels Saul. “As for what your father is owing me, it
shall, at the moment of your acceptance, be wiped entirely from the
books.”
Patty was incensed at the hint of insolence in the gambler's allusion to
her improvident father's financial condition.
“Believe me, Mr. Saul,” she said, with spirit, “no ulterior motive for
worldly advancement has the power to coerce my afflections.”
“But you will consider my proposition of marriage?”
Patty's honest gaze encountered the appraising glint in the coot grey eyes
of the foppish scape-grace before her. She lowered her own eys quickly to
hid a hunted look in their dark depths as she answered:
“Sir, after the week of races, you shall have your answer.”
“And then I shall give up my present means of gaining a livelihood, and,
repairing to San Francisco, shall enter into a profession more fitting the
social station of the lady who is to become my wife.” He bowed deeply and
withdrew, leaving Patty with a sad face and tearfilled eyes.
At last she straightened her tall figure resolutely. “I must not give way
to tears. I can not! I will not! There must be some way to pay my father's
debts beside this extremity, to which death is almost preferable. There is
still a week's time. A week—only a week.” Panic overwhelmed her, and
when someone gently took her hand, she cried aloud in terror.
“Why, Sweetheart, do I frighten you so? I waited long upon the mesa near
the speed-track at the spot we had agreed upon, and when you did not come
I fared forth to meet you.”
“Eric, it is Saul again. What can I do?”
“Dear, I have about $2000 which I am resolved to play on the races. I will
win. I must. Old Irish Mike has brought over his whole stableful of saddle
horses and I was raised in Kentucky. Do not despair, we shall beat the
gambler at his own game. Here is Mike, now. Perhaps—Mike, it's a
fine string of horses you've picked up.
“It is so. Many a thoroughbred I've bought that came all the way from
Kentucky or Missouri. All that had the stamina to get to Californy, the
one thing left that many of the poor devils could sell when they reached
the coast.”
“Mike, some of them are faster than others, I suppose.”
“'Tis what half the shoe-string gamblers in the camp have tried to find
out. I may have me own opinion, but it's to meself I'll kape it till
afther the races are run. I will not spile sport. Have ye seen the last
cayuse that's bein' put in?
“You mean the cow pony that came in with the bunch of cattle from the Napa
Valley yesterday?”
“The same. The auld boy, whilst in his cups, is bettin' she can beat
anythin' on four legs, even jack rabbits an' antelope. The precious
gamblin' riff-raff are fillin' him up with tanglefoot, proper.”
“Why, Mike?” Mike glanced at the silent girl and then down into the gulch
below.
“Miss Patty, have ye visited the claims?”
“No, but I should like to.”
“Come, then, if ye will so pleasure an old man. The men will not be
workin' tomorrow. They will be that pleased to show a lady how to wash a
pan o' dirt, they will be saltin' ivery pan wit' nuggets for ye! Eric,
lad,” he called back to the tall young man, “ye might look the cow horse
over. She has not been curried for long; yet, whisper, beauty is but skin
deep an' the finest rapier is often encased in a rusty scabbard.”
“There is something going forward that Mike wishes me to see,” though
Eric, as he hurried off to the livery stable. “That is why he took Patty
away.”
A crowd of gamblers were just putting up a pair of riders on two horses.
“Hey, Eric Tallman, you used to own this horse. Can he beat this
rat-tailed kyoodle that runs after steers?”
Eric laid a hand fondly on the magnificent black “half breed,” who had
just enough mustang to give him the stamina and spirit and wildness
characteristic of the Spanish-bred horse.
“Keep him on a steady rein and he'll beat anything in the mountains. I'd
never have sold him except—.” He sighed, turning to the cattle
horse. She was long necked, long legged, long haired, wall-eyed, lean, and
badly in need of currying, and yet Irish Mike was no fool, and Mike knew
Eric's extremity—his and the girl's whom he loved.
He noted the deep, broad chest, the tapering barrel and the tremendous
driving power in the steel muscles of the hind quarters, but she drooped,
spiritless. He turned again to the satin-coated half-breed.
“Any dust up yet?”
“Ye-aw, about ten thousand. Old fool seems to be well heeled. We've got
'im full to the eyes, down at String-halt Eddie's place, an' the boys are
goin' to try the plugs out before they put up any more.” Two trial races
were ridden and the sad cow horse was outrun with apparent ease.
The next morning as Patty went on her daily stroll to “take the air,” her
way was blocked by a clamoring crowd of undesirables who were baiting a
miserable old cattle man.
“I tell ye, gentlemen, I was indisposed. 'Twas the liquor talking. Surely
you would not take advantage of a poor old man and his honest,
hard-working little mount. Every day of her life she works. Gentlemen, I
beg you—”
“Begging will get you nothing better than a good drubbing, you filthy
cattle lout! If you don't pay up your bets, we'll take it out of your
hide. I, for one, have a special use for my money at the week's end.”
It was Slick-heels Saul. Patty turned aside, sick at heart. This was the
creature in whose power she was “like to fall.”
Upon her return she found the old cowboy sitting dejectedly under a
liveoak bush. “Sir,” she began timidly, “you are in trouble. I should like
to express my sympathy.”
He rose with suspicious nimbleness. “Now, bless your kind heart, Miss, to
stop to console a sad old man.”
“I overheard what Mr. Saul said to you, sir. He is—”
“Without doubt, without doubt, he is everything you mention. Could you,
now, be Mistress Patty Laughton, of Kentucky?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I knew your Grandfather Laughton, my child, and since I came here I have
heard-of you,” he finished, with innate delicacy. Indeed, who had not
heard her story?
She opened her silken reticule and drew forth a small, buckskin bag. “Will
you not accept it? Yesterday, at the claims, I panned it out myself. I am
sorry for your plight. I am sorry for anyone in the clutches of
Slick-heels Saul.”
“But—. Can you—?”
“It does not matter. Your extremity is greater than mine.”
He stood looking after the slim girl who carried her head so high. “How
like a Kentucky Laughton. Thoroughbred stock, all!” He tossed the bag in
his hand. “'Tis why they are where they are today.” Then his keen old eyes
softened. “And why they are what they are, today. Bless her tender heart
to stoop to an old cattle man in the mire. As for this—I must see
Irish Mike,” and he hurried off with surprising speed.
Bets rose. Every gambler had been apprised of the sure thing and flocked
to the betting like bears to a honey tree.
“Have ye put up ye'r money, Eric?” asked Irish Mike, late the next night.
“Yes,” said Eric, briefly.
“Ah. So.” Mike's shrewd gave slid from the young man's face.
“They do say that Slick-heels Saul is beginnin' to worry over the $20,000
he's staked. The shoestring gang have gathered in the information fr'm th'
express agent that the auld cattle man owns a big Spanish grant down in
the valley, and has $50,00 to his credit in certificates of deposit from
the express company. 'Tis as good as gold.”
“Mike, have you ever seen him before?”
“I never spile sport, me boy.”
It was the last day of the fiesta and the famous race was at hand.
“There is the old cattle man with his vaqueros.”
“Faith, they're a tough lookin' lot, all armed with a brace o' Colts
apiece. 'Tis fun they'd have, cleanin' out a Fandango House.”
“Patty, girl, you are pale today.”
“Oh, Eric, 'tis the last day of grace. Heaven help us if—”
“See, Patty, gir-r-rl, they're fixin' for the foot race between Cherokee
Bob an' that Australian squirt fr'm Sacramento.”
“Why are they placing men with guns every ten feet along the track?”
“The Indian can beat the Australian, but he thried to sell the boys out,
an' if he slackens his gait by ever so little, the b'ys will begin
shootin' sthraight before them. An' maybe afther the race, he'd better be
runnin' right on into the next county.”
“What next?”
“Next is a jackass fight, an' then, the race!”
After the billigerent jacks had been led away, Red Pete suddenly took to
the brush, accelerated by a fusillade of bullets.
“Welchin' his bets, he is, an' ivery man he owes is lettin' him have it.”
“Nary a hit!” wailed old Jack Horner. “The shootin' in this camp is
a-gittin' vile! Time we was quittin so d—— much pick handlin,
an' a-practicin' up. It's a reflection on the community. Why, there ain't
been a Chinaman drilled with a bullet decent an' clean for weeks!”
“They're leading out the horses! Where did that little nigger jockey come
from? The mare's got more ginger today.”
“Eric, surely your horse can win!”
“I don't know, dear.”
“He must! He must, or—”
“Slick-heels Saul's face is turnin' the color of me native isle,” chuckled
Irish Mike. “Patty, me little ladybird, 'tis no time to be faintin'!”
“Oh, you can't know—”
“Faith, an' I know more than you t'ink. Bear up, Asthore, the darkest hour
is just forninst the dawn. Whisht, now! They're off!”
“Here they come! The black is ahead! See, the nigger is lying flat on the
mare's neck. She's closing up! Oh, they are neck and neck! I cannot look.
Eric—The black is getting the whip. Good horse! They are even again!
Ah, it is only for a moment. The mare... is over the line, first... It is
all ended, life, love, honor, happiness... I cannot belong to that man! My
poor old father. Dear old... for his sake, I must. I—”
“Patty, girl.”
“Eric, you are not to blame. You would wager on your own horse. 'Tis but
natural. I must accept my fate with what fortitude I can summon. Please
take me home. All the people staring. I cannot bear it long.”
But when Slick-heels Saul pressed forward to her side at the
boarding-house steps, she was as stately and cold as the snow-hooded rocks
of Granite Mountain.
“I have lost everything, but still I hold you to your promise.”
“I made no promise, sir,” she said haughtily.
“'But you will,” he answered meaningly, “tomorrow.”
“Stand aside!” thundered Eric.
“Come awn,” soothed Irish Mike. “Not with the lady here, Eric, b'y.”
“Patty, I cannot let you go! I will shoot the beast on sight.”
“That would not vindicate my father's honor. Hush, he is coming. I must
remember that I am a Laughton.”
Eric turned to stare moodily out the dusty window. “There goes the cattle
man with his followers and his strong-box. What he must have won! Here
comes Mike. In a hurry, too! I wonder—”
Slick-heels Saul was bowing before the girl.
“Forgive an auld Irishman for intrudin' upon so tender a scene—”
(Slick-heels glared at him malevolently), “but I have he-e-re a something
for Mistress Patty Laughton,” pretending to read the inscription on the
package he held out, “from the auld boy, there, who is just leavin' us.”
“'Bread cast upon the waters of sweet charity shall be returned an hundred
fold. Blessed are the pure in heart for they are of the children of God,'
he has written. Why, it is money!” gasped Patty, “and such a large
amount!”
“He had me put up ye'r little bag o' gold on his mare. These are y'er
winnings.” Mike smiled inwardly at the sum of money. “Sure, auld Andy must
have put a rock or two in the wee buckskin bag,” he thought, but aloud he
said, “I never spile sport, an' I could not tell ye before, but 'tis auld
Andy Magee an' his famous racin' mare, the fastest quarter mile horse
bechune the state of Missouri and the Pacific ocean.
“'Tis the same game he's pulled on the gamblin' crooks all the way from
the Oregon line to Mariposa in the south. Even gettin' filled wit'
tanglefoot is part of the dodge. They cannot touch him an' the vaqueros
protect him fr'm the shootin'.”
“But what about the tryout?”
“Also in the schame. The mare was cross-shod; meanin', two of her shoes,
the near front, an' the off hind wans, were twice as heavy as the others
She could not run top speed in th'm f'r love nor gold. Yesterday she was
shod in light racin' pads, an' under her own jockey. No horse on the coast
could catch her. An' always, the smart racin' gamblers play th' auld man
for a fool. Such is often the end of greed.
“Pay up the dad's gamblin' debts, an' bid this Knight o 'the Green Cloth a
swate an' long fare-ye-well. Then go an' be happy, me child.”
“Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.”
—Bret Harte.
Certain learned archaeologists maintain that there are marked racial
similarities between the American Indians and the Chinese—physical
characteristics dating from unknown centuries, when the widely sundered
continents were probably one.
However that may be, in the days of gold in California the greatest
animosity existed between the Indians and the Chinamen. The feeling began,
presumably, through intermarriage and flourished like the celebrated
milkweed vine of the foothills, which has been known to grow—I quote
a '49er, now dead, which is perhaps taking an advantage—12 inches in
a day.
The tale is told of a Chinaman crossing a suspension footbridge, high over
a winter torrent, from one part of a mining camp to another. An Indian ran
to meet him. John Chinaman started back as quickly as he could on the
swaying bridge. The faster Indian caught him, and, though miners on both
shores sought to save the unfortunate “Chink” by a rain of bullets, it was
too long range, and the Indian threw him to certain death in the river.
But the Indians did not always win, and this, then, is the tale of an
encounter between Hop Sing and Digger Dan.
“In a game which held accountin', On an old Sierra mountain—”
“This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I assure you.
Much more, perchance, might be said—
but I hold him of all men most lightly
Who swerves from the truth in his tale. No, thank you
Well, since you are pressing,
Perhaps I don't care if I do: you may give me the same,
Jim—no sugar.”
—Bret Harte.
Contests of every sort were the order of the day in '49. Any ferocious
encounter which would promulgate betting was countenanced, and even
encouraged. There were dog fights, bull fights, bobcat or mountain lynx
fights, and fights between game chickens.
The tale is even told of cootie fights during long, rainy winter evenings
which must be spent indoors. The harborers of the contestants simply
reached under their shirts, drew forth a doughty grey-backed warrior,
placed him on a child's slate which was used as an arena, and the fight
was on.
A camp named Lousy Level is said to have made a specialty of this sort of
battle. Thousands of dollars were sometimes bet upon the outcome.
Arguments arising from various combats often developed into robbing,
murdering and lynching. This, then, is the tale of a certain lynching.
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