Stewart Edward White

We made our way out of the hills without adventure worth noting. The road was muddy, and a good deal washed. In fact, we had occasionally to do considerable manoeuvring to find a way at all around the landslides from the hills above.

As we descended we came upon traces of the great exodus that was taking place from the hills. All the miners were moving out. We found discarded articles of camp equipment; we passed some people without any equipment at all. Sick men lay under bushes without covering, or staggered painfully down the muddy trails. Many were utterly without food. If it rained, as it did from frequent showers, they took it as cheerfully as they could. This army of the unsuccessful was a striking commentary on the luck of the mines.

Robbers most singularly lacked. I did not hear of a single case of violence in all the rather slow journey out. The explanation did not seem difficult, however. Those who travelled alone had nothing worth the taking; while those who possessed gold went in numbers too strong to be attacked. The road agents had gone straight to the larger cities. Nor, must I confess, did I see many examples of compassion to the unfortunate. In spite of the sentimental 381 stories that have been told–with real enough basis in isolated fact, probably–the time was selfish. It was also, after eliminating the desperadoes and blacklegs, essentially honest. Thus one day we came upon a wagon apparently deserted by the roadside. On it was a rudely scrawled sign:

“Will some kind person stay by my wagon. I am in distress looking for my oxen. Please do not take anything, for I am poor, and the property is not mine.”

Nothing had been touched, as near as I could make out. We travelled by easy stages, and by a roundabout route, both because the road was bad, and because we wanted to see the country. On our way we passed several other small camps. A great many Chinese had come in, and were engaged in scratching over the abandoned claims. In fact, one man told me that sometimes it was worth while to file on some of the abandoned claims just to sell them to these patient people! As we descended from the mountains we naturally came upon more and more worked-out claims. Some had evidently been abandoned in disgust by men with little stamina; but, sometimes, with a considerable humour. An effigy clad in regulation gambler’s rig, including the white shirt, swayed and swung slowly above the merest surface diggings. Across the shirt front these words were written:

“My claim failed!”

And then below them:

382 which was very bad as doggerel, but probably very accurate as to its author’s state of mind.

One afternoon we turned off on a trail known to Old, and rode a few miles to where the Pine family had made its farm. We found the old man and his tall sons inhabiting a large two-roomed cabin situated on a flat. They had already surrounded a field with a fence made of split pickets and rails, and were working away with the tireless energy of the born axemen at enclosing still more. Their horses had been turned into ploughing; and from somewhere or other they had procured a cock and a dozen hens. Of these they were inordinately proud, and they took great pains to herd them in every night away from wildcats and other beasts. We stayed with them four days, and we had a fine time. Every man of them was keenly interested in the development of the valley and the discovery of its possibilities. We discussed apples, barley, peaches, apricots, ditches, irrigation, beans, hogs, and a hundred kindred topics, to Johnny’s vast disgust. I had been raised on a New England farm; Yank had experienced agricultural vicissitudes in the new country west of the Alleghanies; and the Pines had scratched the surface of the earth in many localities. But this was a new climate and a new soil to all of us; and we had nothing to guide us. The subject was fascinating. Johnny was frankly bored with it all, but managed to have a good time hunting for the game with which the country abounded.

For a brief period Yank and I quite envied the lot of these pioneers who had a settled stake in the country.

“I wish I could go in for this sort of thing,” said Yank.

383“Why don’t you?” urged old man Pine. “There’s a flat just above us.”

“How did you get hold of this land?” I inquired curiously.

“Just took it”.

“Doesn’t it belong to anybody?”

“It’s part of one of these big Greaser ranchos,” said Pine impatiently. “I made a good try to git to the bottom of it. One fellar says he owns it, and will sell; then comes another that says he owns it and won’t sell. And so on. They don’t nohow use this country, except a few cattle comes through once in a while. I got tired of monkeying with them and I came out here and squatted. If I owe anybody anything, they got to show me who it is. I don’t believe none of them knows themselves who it really belongs to.”

“I’d hate to put a lot of work into a place, and then have to move out,” said I doubtfully.

“I’d like to see anybody move me out!” observed old man Pine grimly.

Farther up in the hills they were putting together the framework of a sawmill, working on it at odd times when the ranch itself did not demand attention. It was built of massive hewn timbers, raised into place with great difficulty. They had no machinery as yet, but would get that later out of their first farming profits.

“There ain’t no hurry about it anyway,” explained Pine, “for as yet there ain’t no demand for lumber yereabouts.”

“I should say not!” exploded Johnny with a derisive shriek of laughter, “unless you’re going to sell it to the elks and coyotes!”

384Pine turned toward him seriously.

“This is all good land yere,” said he, “and they’ll want lumber.”

“It looks mighty good to me,” said Yank.

“Well, why don’t you settle?” urged Pine.

“And me with fifteen hundred good dollars?” replied Yank. “It ain’t such an everlasting fortune; but it’ll git me a place back home; and I’ve had my fun. This country is too far off. I’m going back home.”

To this sentiment Johnny and I heartily agreed. It is a curious fact that not one man in ten thousand even contemplated the possibility of making California his permanent home. It was a place in which to get as rich as he could, and then to leave.

Nevertheless we left our backwoods friends reluctantly; and at the top of the hill we stopped our two horses to look back on the valley. It lay, with its brown, freshly upturned earth, its scattered broad oaks, its low wood-crowned knolls, as though asleep in the shimmering warm floods of golden sunshine. Through the still air we heard plainly the beat of an axe, and the low, drowsy clucking of hens. A peaceful and grateful feeling of settled permanence, to which the restless temporary life of mining camps had long left us strangers, filled us with the vague stirrings of envy.

The feeling soon passed. We marched cheerfully away, our hopes busy with what we would do when we reached New York. Johnny and I had accumulated very fair sums of money, in spite of our loss at the hands of the robbers, what with the takings at Hangman’s Gulch, 385 what was left from the robbery, and Italian Bar. These sums did not constitute an enormous fortune, to be sure. There was nothing spectacular in our winnings; but they totalled about five times the amount we could have made at home; and they represented a very fair little stake with which to start life. We were young.

We found Sacramento under water. A sluggish, brown flood filled the town and spread far abroad over the flat countryside. Men were living in the second stories of such buildings as possessed second stories, and on the roofs of others. They were paddling about in all sorts of improvised boats and rafts. I saw one man keeping a precarious equilibrium in a baker’s trough; and another sprawled out face down on an India rubber bed paddling overside with his hands.

We viewed these things from the thwarts of a boat which we hired for ten dollars. Our horses we had left outside of town on the highlands. Everywhere we passed men and shouted to them a cheery greeting. Everybody seemed optimistic and inclined to believe that the flood would soon go down.

“Anyway, she’s killed the rats,” one man shouted in answer to our call.

We grinned an appreciation of what we thought merely a facetious reply. Rats had not yet penetrated to the mines, so we did not know anything about them. Next day, in San Francisco, we began to apprehend the man’s remark.

Thus we rowed cheerfully about, having a good time at the other fellow’s expense. Suddenly Johnny, who was 386 steering, dropped his paddle with an exclamation. Yank and I turned to see what had so struck him. Beyond the trees that marked where the bank of the river ought to be we saw two tall smokestacks belching forth a great volume of black smoke.

“A steamer!” cried Yank.

“Yes, and a good big one!” I added.

We lay to our oars and soon drew alongside. She proved to be a side wheeler, of fully seven hundred tons, exactly like the craft we had often seen plying the Hudson.

“Now how do you suppose they got her out here?” I marvelled.

She was almost completely surrounded by craft of all descriptions; her decks were crowded. We read the name McKim on her paddle boxes.

A man with an official cap appeared at the rail.

“Bound for San Francisco?” I called to him.

“Off in two minutes,” he replied.

“What’s the fare?”

“Forty dollars.”

“Come on, boys,” said I to my comrades, at the same time seizing a dangling rope.

“Hold on!” cried Yank. “How about our two horses and our blankets, and this boat?”

I cast my eye around, and discovered a boy of fourteen or fifteen in the stern of a neat fisherman’s dory a few feet away.

“Here!” I called to him. “Do you want two good horses and some blankets?”

“I ain’t got any money.”

387“Don’t need any. These are free. We’re going down on this boat. You’ll find the outfit under the big white oak two miles above the forks on the American. They’re yours if you’ll go get them.”

“What do you want me to do?” he demanded suspiciously.

“Two things: return this boat to its owner–a man named Lilly who lives-”

“I know the boat,” the boy interrupted.

“The other is to be sure to go up to-day after those horses. They’re picketed out.”

“All right,” agreed the boy, whose enthusiasm kindled as his belief in the genuineness of the offer was assured.

I seized a rope, swung myself up to the flat fender, and thence to the deck.

“Come on!” I called to Yank and Johnny, who were hesitating. “It’ll cost more than those horses and blankets are worth to wait.”

Thereupon they followed me. The boy made fast our boat to his own. Five minutes later we were dropping down the river.

“This is what I call real luxury,” said Johnny, returning from an inspection of our craft. “There’s a barroom, and a gambling layout, and velvet carpets and chairs, mirrors, a minstrel show, and all the fixings. Now who’d expect to run against a layout like this on the river?”

“What I’d like to know is how they got her out here,” said I. “Look at her! She’s a river boat. A six-foot wave ought to swamp her!”

We thought of a half dozen solutions, and dismissed 388 them all. The discussion, however, served its purpose in inflaming our curiosity.

“I’m going to find some one who knows,” I announced at last.

This was not so easy. The captain was of course remote and haughty and inaccessible, and the other officers were too busy handling the ship and the swarming rough crowd to pay any attention to us. The crew were new hands. Finally, however, we found in the engine room a hard bitten individual with a short pipe and some leisure. To him we proffered our question.

“Sailed her,” said he.

“Around the Horn?” I cried.

He looked at me a bitter instant.

“The sailing wasn’t very good across the plains, at that time,” said he.

Little by little we got his story. I am not a seafaring man, but it seems to me one of the most extraordinary feats of which I have ever heard. The lower decks of the McKim had been boarded up with heavy planks; some of her frailer gimcracks of superstructure had been dismantled, and then she had been sent under her own power on the long journey around the Horn. Think of it! A smooth-water river boat, light draught, top heavy, frail in construction, sent out to battle with the might of three oceans! However, she made it; and after her her sister ship, the Senator, and they made money for their owners, and I am glad of it. That certainly was a gallant enterprise!

She was on this trip jammed full of people, mostly 389 those returning from the mines. A trip on the McKim implied a certain amount of prosperity, so we were a jolly lot. The weather was fine, and a bright moon illuminated the swollen river. We had drinkers, songsters, debaters, gamblers, jokers, and a few inclined to be quarrelsome, all of which added to the variety of the occasion. I wandered around from one group to another, thoroughly enjoying myself, both out on deck and in the cabins. It might be added that there were no sleepers!

Along toward midnight, as I was leaning on the rail forward watching the effect of the moon on the water and the shower of sparks from the twin stacks against the sky, I was suddenly startled by the cry of “man overboard,” and a rush toward the stern. I followed as quickly as I was able. The paddle wheels had been instantly reversed, and a half dozen sailors were busily lowering a boat. A crowd of men, alarmed by the trembling of the vessel as her way was checked, poured out from the cabins. The fact that I was already on deck gave me an advantageous post; so that I found myself near the stern rail.

“He was leaning against the rail,” one was explaining excitedly, “and it give way, and in he went. He never came up!”

Everybody was watching eagerly the moonlit expanse of the river.

“I guess he’s a goner,” said a man after a few moments. “He ain’t in sight nowhere.”

“There he is!” cried a half dozen voices all at once.

A head shot into sight a few hundred yards astern, blowing the silvered water aside. The small boat, which 390 was now afloat, immediately headed in his direction, and a moment later he was hauled aboard amid frantic cheers. The dripping victim of the accident clambered to the deck.

It was Johnny!

He was beside himself with excitement, sputtering with rage and uttering frantic threats against something or somebody. His eyes were wild, and he fairly frothed at the mouth. I seized him by the arm. He stared at me, then became coherent, though he still spluttered. Johnny was habitually so quietly reserved as far as emotions go that his present excitement was at first utterly incomprehensible.

It seemed that he had been leaning against the rail, watching the moonlight, when suddenly it had given way beneath his weight and he had fallen into the river.

“They had no business to have so weak a rail!” he cried bitterly.

“Well, you’re here, all right,” I said soothingly. “There’s no great harm done.”

“Oh, isn’t there?” he snarled.

Then we learned how the weight of the gold around his waist had carried him down like a plummet; and we sensed a little of the desperate horror with which he had torn and struggled to free himself from that dreadful burden.

“I thought I’d burst!” said he.

And then he had torn off the belt, and had shot to the surface.

“It’s down there,” he said more calmly, “every confounded yellow grain of it.” He laughed a little. “Broke!” said he. “No New York in mine!”

391The crowd murmured sympathetically.

“Gol darn it, boys, it’s rotten hard luck!” cried a big miner with some heat. “Who’ll chip in?”

At the words Johnny recovered himself, and his customary ease of manner returned.

“Much obliged, boys,” said he, “but I’ve still got my health. I don’t need charity. Guess I’ve been doing the baby act; but I was damn mad at that rotten old rail. Anyway,” he laughed, “there need nobody say in the future that there’s no gold in the lower Sacramento. There is; I put it there myself.”

The tall miner slowly stowed away his buckskin sack, looking keenly in Johnny’s face.

“Well, you’ll have a drink, anyway,” said he.

“Oh, hell, yes!” agreed Johnny, “I’ll have a drink!”