B, .a op i ' / M^ r * UNWRITTEN HISTORY. J^^s>>^^^ THE ]\I)IAX MOTHER. UNWRITTEN HISTORY: LIFE AMONGST THE MODOCS, BY JOAQUIN MILLER ILLUSTRATED FROM NEW DESIGNS, SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY. HARTFORD, CONK: AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY. 1874. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by the AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. E.19 TO THE RED MEN OF AMERICA. M652165 PUBLISHER'S ANNOUNCEMENT. In offering this' book to the American Public the publish- ers have not failed to consider the fact that its author's views of the relations existing between the White and Indian Races, and the question of justice having been done the latter, will not accord with those of many of our people. A view of the case from the Red Man's stand-point is a novel one, and although some features presented thereby might endanger the repose of his conscience, yet it is a view which every honest American should endeavor to obtain. Strong preju- dices exist against the Indian; how justly, it should be the desire of all to ascertain. Without pen, type, press or other means of public contradiction, explanation or defence, the Indian helplessly suffers from the manufactured or garbled statements of parties interested in keeping the public mind darkened in regard to the truth. There are " two sides to every story." The White Man's version of his dealings with the Indian has been for years repeated over and over again to the public. The other side, with its exposition of injus- tice and cruelty, has yet to be told. Of this side, in these pages the author speaks. His life among the Indians and his knowledge of their inner life fit him for the task, and it is hoped and believed by his publishers, that a public, ever as ready to receive the truth, will rejoice to avail itself of this opportunity to look for once upon the doomed Indian, as portrayed by a pen employed in his behalf. To the American Edition, the Publishers have thought proper to add an appendix, containing extracts from papers accompanying the report of the commissioner of Indian affairs in 1873, which go to sustain the position of our Author. ILLUSTRATIONS. Page 1 Frontispiece, Portrait, The Author — 2 Crossing the Summit To Pace 28 3 At a Disadvantage " " 37 4 A Forced Balance " " 57 5 " Now You Git." " " 80 6 Among Barbarians " " 85 7 Winning the Bet " " 98 8 The Other Side of the Story " " 120 9 Receiving the New Judge " " 157 10 Paquita " " 172 11 Captain Jim " " 184 12 The Tables Turned " " 226 13 The Lost Cabin " " 235 14 The Farewell " " 259 15 The Indian Bridal " " 280 16 My First Battle " " 294 17 Pistol Practice " " 337 18 Discussing Peace Measures - " M 362 19 The Struggle for Life " " 384 20 Funeral of Paquita " " 390 21 Klamat's Prophecy " " 399 22 The Indian Mother " " 421 23 The Doctor's Home " " 426 24 Calli Shasta M " 431 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. SHADOWS OF SHASTA. Mount Shasta— Mining Camps— The Miners of Old— The Original Pos- sessors of the Forests— A Pace without a Historian— A Word for the Indian— The Ben Wright Massacre of Indians— Retaliation and Revenge— My First Sight of Shasta— Monument of Stones 17 CHAPTER II. EL. VAQDERO. Wild Horses and Wild Men— Engaged with a Drover — An Indian Attack— A Merciful Savage — Among the Shastas — Lonely Life of the Indian — How he Spends his Evenings— The "Indian Question" from an Indian's Point of View 32 CHAPTER III. THE FINGER — BOARD OF FATE. Neither a Boy nor a Man — The letter "I"— The pronoun "We" — Massacre of my Indian Friends— The beautiful Klamat — The Prince — The discomfited Boatman 4G CHAPTER IV. HIGH, LOW, JACK AND THE GAME. The Prince meets an Acquaintance — " Boston's Best" — Clean broke — How it was Done — Yreka — All right Now— The Negro Stable Keeper. GO CHAPTER V. IN A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP. Alone in a City — Men to be Avoided — Stolen Slumbers — A Peep at the Mines and Miners — The One- Eyed Negro — A Desperate Race — How- dy-do?— Take a Drink?— The Bar Room— The Swoon— The Moon- Eyed Heathen Nurse— Recovery 72 CHAPTER VI. DOWN AMONG THE LIVE MEN. The Prince — En-Route for Humbug — Three Thousand Men, not a Woman or a Child — "The Forks"— "The Howlin' Wilderness " — ♦'Long Dan "—The Bet- Dying with Boots on— The Cigars Won.. 87 Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. snow! nothing but snow! A Struggle for Life — Winter Life in the Mines — The Prince in Extremi- ties 99 CHAPTER VIII. BLOOD ON THE SNOW. Hard Times with the Indians— Model White Men — A Man Killed — Rally to the Bar and take a Drink— Death to the Indian — No Quar- ters to Women or Children— The " Sydney Duck " — Rescue of Paqui- ta and Klamath . 110 CHAPTER IX. A WORD TOR THE RED MAN. The True Indian — False Testimony against them — The White Man's side of the Story — Who tells the Indians' side? — A Quaker's Experi- ence with Indians — Treatment of the Indians by the Government — The Prince and his Proteges — The Doctor 125 CHAPTER X. TWO LITTLE INDIANS. Paquita and Klamath — The New Alcade and his Hat— Six Foot Sandy — The Judge and his new Beaver 145 CHAPTER XL A MAN FOR BREAKFAST. The Judge set to Work — The Trial of Spades— Murder of the Judge — Fate of the Beaver Hat 159 CHAPTER XII. BONE AND SINEW. Still in the Mines — The Pet of the Camp— The Doctor under a Cloud — The Doomed Race— Why the Indians Die— The last of his Race 175 CHAPTER XIII. A STORM IN THE SIERRAS. PaqunVs Story — Indians as Travelers— The coming Storm— Flood and Ruin ... 186 CHAPTER XIV. A HOME TO LET. The Departure— Cabin to Let— The blind Trail— Klamat as a Leader— A Pursuing Party— Braying of a Mule— The Flight 194 CONTENTS. Xlll CHAPTER XV. TURN TO THE RIGHT AS THE LAW DIRECTS. Difficulties of Mountain Travel— Sight of Shasta— Delight of Paquita— The Pursuers and what they wanted— The Run — Camping out — Cap- tured—The Table Turned— The Captors Prisoners 206 CHAPTER XVI. HOME. The Doctor recovers Suddenly— The Journey Proceeds — Camp in the Wilderness — The famous "Last Cabin" — Paquita' s Journey — The Indians at Home 229 CHAPTER XVII. THE LOST CABIN. Winter again — The Elk — The Black Bear — Klamat as a Hunter — The Winter passes, and Spring comes once more — Paquita not returned — Gold found by the Prince and Doctor— The Doctor leaves— Paquita returns— Her Story — Her Brothers — The Prince's Oath — The Prince and the Child— Followed 241 CHAPTER XVIII. GOOD-BYE. Indian Habits— The Autumn Feasts — Paquita in her Maidenhood — The Prince Thoughtful and Sad — The Prince says Good-Bye 252 CHAPTER XIX. THE INDIANS' ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION. At night in the Indian Camp— The Great Spirit — The Creation — Ascent of Mount Shasta — The Missionary's Visit — The Indians around Mount Shasta — Their thirst for Knowledge — Story Tellers — Teaching Geog- raphy—Morals — Superstitions — The Creation of the Tribe — The Griz- zly Bear sacred— Thoughts on Death and Burial — The Indians' Heaven — Marriage Ceremony 2G2 CHAPTER XX. THE LAST OF THE LOST CABIN. A Chiefs views of our Language and Bible— Burning of the Cabin — Thirst for Gold an Evil 282 CHAPTER XXI. MY FIRST BATTLE. Mountain Joe—Devil's Castle— The Eve of the Battle— Struck by an Arrow — The Indian Squaw— Her Mournings and Reproaches — A Re- turn to Old Friends 290 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXII. MY NEW REPUBLIC. A Plan for Peace— Among the Modoc's— A Hobby— Means to accom- plish my Ends— Winter Camps on the M'Cloud— The Pit River Val- ley Massacre 298 CHAPTER XXIII. DOWN IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH. A Visit to the Scene of the Massacre— An Indian Camp— The Valley of Death — Indian Squaws — Sam Lockhart — A Prisoner at Yreka — A Poor Reward for a Dangerous service 306 CHAPTER XXIV. A PRISONER. Expedition against the Indians— Its Motives — " The Man who lived with the Indians" — His Doom Foretold— Gideon S. Whiting — Prom a Prisoner to a Leader. — Physical Courage — The Expedition a Success — White Butchers — Return to Yreka — Good-bye to the Expe- dition — An Attempt at Assassination — Squaw Valley 313 CHAPTER XXV. A NEW DEPARTURE. Sitting on two Chairs — Casting lot with the Indians — The "Rubicon" Crossed — An Indian is an Indian — No distinction in Tribes — A visit to Yreka — A Dangerous Enterprise — Obtaining Ammunition — Plight with Booty — An Explosion — Wailing for the Dead 323 CHAPTER XXVI. A BLOODY MEETING. Bill Hirst the famous Man-Killer — Scene in a Billiard Saloon — Antago- nists Face to Face — A Second Meeting — The Battle opens — The Result 333 CHAPTER XXVII. BRADLEY AND HIRST. An Enemy Returned — Fast Friends — Hanging Highwaymen — My first Client — Hirst in Court — A Desperate Fight — Refusing to Die — Aston- ishing Recovery— Another Fight — Another wonderful Recovery — Killed again, and another Recovery — Still Living 338 CHAPTER XXVIII. BATTLES ON THE BORDER. Effect of Bullets— Friends appear — Return to the Indians — Indian Sig- nals — Another Friend — Another Massacre of Indians — A Splendid Horse and Ride — The Camp— Blood ! Blood ! Blood ! — Klamat — Paq- uita — Indian Heroines — A Battle — A Council of War — A Mission of Peace — Sympathy of the Mexicans— Approach to the White Camp. . . 340 LIFE AMONGST THE MODOCS : UNWRITTEN HISTORY. CHAPTER L SHADOWS OF SHASTA. S lone as God, and white as a winter moon, Mount Shasta starts up sudden and solitary w&fyk from the heart of the great black forests of Northern California. You would hardly call Mount Shasta a part of the Sierras; you would say rather that it is the great white tower of some ancient and eternal wall, with here and there the white walls overthrown. ' It has no rival ! There is not even a snow-crowned subject in sight of its dominion. A shining pyramid in mail of everlasting frosts and ice, the sailor some- times, in a day of singular clearness, catches glimpses of it from the sea a hundred miles away to the west ; and it may be seen from the dome of the capital 340 miles distant. The immigrant coming from the east beholds the snowy, solitary pillar from afar out on B 17 18 SIIADO WS OF SHASTA. the arid sage-brush plains, and lifts his hands in silence as in answer to a sign. Column upon column of storm-stained tamarack, strong-tossing pines, and war-like looking firs have rallied here. They stand with their backs against this mountain, frowning down dark-browed, and con- fronting the face of the Saxon. They defy the ad- vance of civilization into their ranks. What if these dark and splendid columns, a hundred miles in depth, should be the last to go down in America ! What if this should be the old guard gathered here, mar- shalled around their emperor in plumes and armour, that may die but not surrender. Ascend this mountain, stand against the snow above the upper belt of pines, and take a glance be- low. Toward the sea nothing but the black and unbroken forest. Mountains, it is true, dip and divide and break the monotony as the waves break up the sea ; yet it is still the sea, still the unbroken forest, black and magnificent. To the south the landscape sinks and declines gradually, but still main- tains its column of dark-plumed grenadiers, till the Sacramento Valley is reached, nearly a hundred miles away. Silver rivers run here, the sweetest in the world. They wind and wind among the rocks and mossy roots, with California lilies, and the yew with scarlet berries dipping in the water, and trout idling in the eddies and cool places by the basket- 811 ADO WS OF SHASTA. 19 ful. On the east, the forest still keeps up unbroken rank till the Pit River valley is reached ; and even there it surrounds the valley, and locks it up tight in its black embrace. To the north, it is true, Shasta valley makes quite a dimple in the sable sea, and men plough there, and Mexicans drive mules or herd their mustang ponies on the open plain. But the valley is limited, surrounded by the forest confined and imprisoned. Look intently down among the black and rolling hills, forty miles away to the west, and here and there you will see a haze of cloud or smoke hung up above the trees ; or, driven by the wind that is coming from the sea, it may drag and creep along as if tangled in the tops. These are mining camps. Men are there, down in these dreadful canons, out of sight of the sun, swal- lowed up, buried in the impenetrable gloom of the forest, toiling for gold. Each one of these camps is a world in itself. History, romance, tragedy, poetry in every one of them. They are connected together, and reach the outer world only by a narrow little pack trail, stretching through the timber, stringing round the mountains, barely wide enough to admit of footmen and little Mexican mules with their apparajos, to pass in single file. We will descend into one of these camps by-and-by. I dwelt there a year, many and many a year ago. I shall picture 20 SHAD WS OF SHASTA. that camp as it was, and describe events as they hap- pened. Giants were there, great men were there. They were very strong, energetic and resolute, and hence were neither gentle or sympathetic. They were honourable, noble, brave and generous, and yet they would have dragged a Trojan around the wall by the heels and thought nothing of it. Coming suddenly into the country with prejudices against and apprehensions of the Indians, of whom they knew nothing save through novels, they of course were in no mood to study their nature. Besides, they knew that they were in a way, trespassers if not invaders, that the Government had never treated for the land or offered any terms whatever to the Indians, and like most men who feel that they are somehow in the wrong, did not care to get on terms with their antagonists. They would have named the Indian a Trojan, and dragged him around, not only by the heels but by the scalp, rath- er than have taken time or trouble, as a rule, to get in the right of the matter. I say that the greatest, and the grandest body of men that have ever been gathered together since the seige of Troy, was once here on the Pacific. I grant that they were rough enough sometimes. I admit that they took a peculiar delight in periodical six- shooter war dances, these wild-bearded, hairy-breasted men, and that they did a great deal of promiscuous SIIADO WS OF SHASTA. 21 killing among each other, but then they did it in such a manly sort of way ! There is another race in these forests. I lived with them nearly five years. A great sin it was thought then, indeed. You do not see the smoke of their wigwams through the trees. They do not smite the mountain rocks for gold, nor fell the pines, nor roil up the waters and ruin them for the fisher- men. All this magnificent forest is their estate. The Great Spirit made this mountain first of all, and gave it to them, they say, and they have possessed it ever since. They preserve the forest, keep out the fires, for it is the park for their deer. I shall endeavour to make this sketch of my life with the Indians — a subject about which so much has been written and so little is known — true in every particular. In so far as I succeed in doing that I think the work will be novel and original. No man with a strict regard for truth should attempt to write his autobiography with a view to publication during his life ; the temptations are too great. A man standing on the gallows, without hope of descending and mixing again with his fellow men, might trust himself to utter u the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," as the law hath it ; and a Crusoe on his island, without sail in sight or hope of sail, might be equally sincere, but I know of few other conditions in which I could follow a man 22 SHAD WS OF SHASTA. through his account of himself with perfect confidence. This narrative, however, while the thread of it is necessarily spun around a few years of my early life, is not particularly of myself, but of a race of people that has lived centuries of history and never yet had a historian ; that has suffered nearly four hundred years of wrong, and never yet had an advocate. I must write of myself, because I was among these people of whom I write, though often in the back- ground, giving place to the inner and actual lives of a silent and mysterious people, a race of prophets ; poets without the gift of expression — a race that has been often, almost always, mistreated, and never understood — a race that is moving noiselessly from the face of the earth ; dreamers that sometimes waken from their mysteriousness and simplicity, and then, blood, brutality, and all the ferocity that marks a man of maddened passions, women without mercy and without reason, brand them with the appropriate name of savages. But beyond this, I have a word to say for the Indian.. I saw him as he was, not as he is. In one little spot of our land, I saw him as he was centuries ago in every part of it perhaps, a Druid and a dreamer — the mildest and the tamest of beings. I saw him as no man can see him now. I saw him as no man ever saw him who had the desire and patience to observe, the sympathy to understand, and SRADO WS OF SHASTA. 23 the intelligence to communicate his observation to those who would really like to understand him. He is truly " the gentle savage ; " the worst and the best of men, the tamest and the fiercest of beings. The world cannot understand the combination of these two qualities. For want of truer comparison let us liken him to a jealous woman — a whole souled un- cultured woman, strong in her passions and her love. A sort of Parisian woman, now made desperate by a long siege and an endless war. A singular combination of circumstances laid his life bare to me. I was a child and he was a child. He permitted me to enter his heart. As I write these opening lines here to-day in the Old World, a war of extermination is declared against the Modoc Indians in the New. I know these people. I know every foot of their once vast possessions, stretching away to the north and east of Mount Shasta. I know their rights and their wrongs. I have known them for nearly twenty years. Peace commissioners have been killed by the Modocs, and the civilized world condemns the act. I am not prepared to defend it. This nar- rative is not for its defence, or for the defence of the Indian or any one ; but I could, by a ten-line paragraph, throw a bombshell into the camp of the civilized world at this moment, and change the whole drift of public opinion. But it would be too late to 24 SIIADO WS OF SHASTA. be of any particular use to this one doomed tribe. Years and years ago, when Captain Jack was but a boy, the Modocs were at war with the whites, who were then scouring the country in search of gold. A company took the field under the command of a brave and reckless ruffian named Ben Wright. The Indians were not so well armed and equipped as their enemies. The necessities of the case, to say nothing of their nature, compelled them to fight from behind the cover of the rocks and trees. They were hard to reach, and generally came out best in the few little battles that were fought. In this emergency Captain Wright proposed to meet the chiefs in council, for the purpose of making a lasting and permanent treaty. The Indians consent- ed, and the leaders came in. " Go back," said Wright, " and bring in all your people ; we will have council, and celebrate our peace with a feast." The Indians came in in great numbers, laid down their arms, and then at a sign Wright and his men fell upon them, and murdered them without mercy. Captain Wright boasted on his return that he had made a, permanent treaty with at least a thou- sand Indians. Captain Jack was but a boy then, but he was a true Indian. He was not a chief then. I believe he was not even of the blood which entitles him to that place by inheritance, but he was a bold, shrewd SIIADO WS OF SJTASTA. 25 Indian, and won the confidence of the tribe. He united himself to a band of the Modocs, worked his way to their head, and bided his time for revenge. For nearly half a lifetime he and his warriors waited their chance, and when it came they were not un- equal to the occasion. They have murdered, perhaps, one white man to one hundred Indians that were butchered in the same way, and not so very far from the same spot. I deplore the conduct of the Modocs. It will con- tribute to the misfortune of nearly every Indian in America, however well some of the rulers of the land may feel towards the race. With these facts before you, considering our superiority in understanding right and wrong, and all that, you may not be so much surprised at the faithful following in this case of the example we set the Modoc Indians, which resulted in the massacre, and the universal condemnation of Captain Jack and his clan. To return to my reason for publishing this sketch at this time. You will see that treating chiefly of the Indians, as it does, it may render them a service, that by-and-by would be of but little use, by instruct- ing good men who have to deal with this peculiar people. I know full well how many men there are on the border who are ready to rise up and contradict 26 SB ADO WS OF SHASTA. everything that looks like clemency or an apology for the Indian, and have therefore given only a brief account of the Ben Wright treachery and tragedy, and only such an account as I believe the fiercest enemy of the Indians living in that region admits to be true, or at least, such an account as Ben Wright gave and was accustomed to boast of. The Indian account of the affair, however, which I have heard a hundred times around their camp fires, and over which they seemed to never tire of brooding and mourning, is quite another story. It is dark and dreadful. The day is even yet with them, a sort of St. Bartholomew's Eve, and their mournful narra- tion of all the bloody and brutal events would fill a volume. They waited for revenge, a very bad thing for Indians to do, I find ; though a Christian king can wait a lifetime, and a Christian nation half a century. They saw their tribe wasting away every year; every year the hordes of white settlers were eating into the heart of their hunting grounds, still they lay in their lava beds or moved like shadows through the stormy forests and silently waited, and then when the whites came into their camp to talk for peace, as they had gone into the camp of the whites, they showed themselves but too apt scholars in the bloody lesson of long ago. The scene of this narrative lies immediately about SIIADO WS OF SHASTA. 27 the base of Mount Shasta. The Klamat river with its tributaries flows from its snows on the north, and the quiet Sacramento from the south. The Shasta Indians, now but the remnant of a tribe at one time the most powerful on the Pacific, live at the south base of the mountain, while the Modocs and Pit Eiver Indians live at the east and north-east, with the Klamats still to the north. The other sides and base of the mountain is disputed territory, since the driv- ing out of its original owners, between settlers and hunters, and the roving bands of Indians. It was late in the fall. I do not know the day or even remember the month ; but I do know that I was alone, a frail, sensitive, girl-looking boy, almost destitute, trying to make my way to the mines of California, and that before I had ridden my little spotted Cayuse pony half way up the ten-mile trail that then crossed the Siskiyou mountains, I met little patches of snow ; and that a keen, cold wind came pitching down between the trees into my face from the California side of the summit. At one place I saw where a moccasin track was in the snow, and leading across the trail ; a very large track I thought it was then, but now I know that it was made by many feet stepping in the same im- pression. My dress was scant enough for winter, and it was chill and dismal. A fantastic dress, too, for one look- 28 SHADO WS OF SHASTA. ing to the rugged life of a miner; a sort of cross between an Indian chief and a Mexican vaquero, with a preference for colour carried to extremes. As I approached the summit the snow grew deeper, and the dark firs, weighted with snow, reached their sable and supple limbs across my path as if to catch me by the yellow hair, that fell, like a school-giiTs, on my shoulders. Some of the little firs were cov- ered with snow, and were converted into pyramids and snowy pillars. I crossed the summit in safety, with a dreamy sort of delight, a half -articulated " Thank God ! " and began to descend. Here the snow disappeared on the south side of the mountain, and a generous flood of sunshine took its place. After a while I turned a sharp-cut point in the trail, with dense woods hanging on either shoulder, and an open world before me. I lifted my eyes and looked away to the south. Mount Shasta was before me. For the first time I now looked upon the mountain in whose shadows so many tragedies were to be enacted ; the most comely and perfect snow peak in America. Nearly a hundred miles away, it seemed in the pure, clear atmosphere of the mountains to be almost at hand. Above the woods, above the clouds, almost above the snow, it looked like the first approach of land to another world. Away across a grey sea of clouds that arose CROSSING THE SUMMIT. SI1AD0 WS OF SHASTA. 23 from the Klamat and Sliasta rivers, the mountain stood, a solitary island ; white and flashing like a pyramid of silver ! solemn, majestic and sublime ! Lonely and cold and white. A cloud or two about his brow, sometimes resting there, then wreathed and coiled about, then blown like banners streaming in the wind. I had lifted my hands to Mount Hood, uncovered my head, bowed down and felt unutterable things, loved, admired, adored, with all the strength of an impulsive and passionate young heart. But he who loves and worships naturally and freely, as all strong, true souls must and will do, loves that which is most magnificent and most lovable in his scope of vision. Hood is a magnificent idol ; is sufficient, if you do not see Shasta. A grander or a lovelier object makes shipwreck of a former love. This is sadly so. Jealousy is born of an instinctive knowledge of this truth. . . . Hood is rugged, kingly, majestic, immortal ! But he is only the head and front of a well-raised family. He is not alone in his splendour. Your admiration is divided and weakened. Beyond the Columbia St. Helen's flashes in the sun in summer or is folded in clouds from the sea in winter. On either hand Jefferson and Washington divide the attention ; then farther away, fair as a stud of fallen stars, the white 30 SIIABO WS OF SHASTA. Three Sisters are grouped together about the foun- tain springs of the Willamette river ; — all in a line — all in one range of mountains ; as it were, mighty milestones along the way of clouds ! — marble pillars pointing the road to God. Mount Shasta has all the sublimity, all the strength, majesty, and magnificence of Hood ; yet is so alone, unsupported, and solitary, that you go down before him utterly, with an undivided adora- tion — a sympathy for his loneliness and a devotion for his valour — an admiration that shall pass unchal- lenged. I dismounted and stood in the declining sun, hat in hand, and looked long and earnestly across the sea of clouds. Now and then long strings of swans went by to Klamat lakes. I could hear them calling to each other. Far and faint and unearthly their echoes seemed, and were as sounds that had lost their way, and came to me for protection. I looked and listened long but uttered not a sound ; strangely mute for a boy ; but exclamation at such a time is a sacrilege. At last I threw a kiss across the sea of clouds, as the red banners and belts of gold streamed from the summit in the setting- sun, and turned, took up my lariat, mounted, and proceeded down the mountain. Should ever your fortune lead you to cross the Chinese wall that divides the people of Oregon from SIIADO WS OF SHASTA. 31 the people of California, stop at the Mountain House and ask for the old mountain trail. Take the direc- tion and stop at the top of what is called the first summit of the Siskiyou mountains, for there you will see to the left hand by the trail a pile of rocks high as your head, put there to mark where a party fell a few days after I passed the place. Dismount and contribute a stone to the monu- ment from the loose rocks that lie up and down the trail. It is a pretty Indian custom that the whites sometimes adopt and cherish. I never fail to ob- serve it here, for this spot means a great deal to me. I uncover my head, take up a stone and lay it on the pile, then turn my face to Mount Shasta and kiss my hand, for the want of some better expression. CHAPTEE II. EL VAQUEEO. ^ESCENDING the mountain range that then divided California from Oregon, I fell in with a sour, flinty-faced old man, with a band of horses, which he was driving to the lower settlements of California. He was short of help, and proposed to take me into his employ for the round trip, promising to pay me whatever my services were worth. Glad of an opportunity to do something at least in a new land, I scarcely thought of the consideration, but eagerly accepted his offer, and was enrolled as a vaquero along with a motley set of half Indians from the north, and Mexicans from the south. Our duties were light, and the employment pleas- ant and congenial to my nature. It was, in fact, about the only thing I was then fit for in that strange new country, boiling and surging with hosts of strong men, rushing hither and thither in search of gold. Our work consisted in keeping the saddle eight or 32 CONTENTS. XV CHAPTER XXIX. MY MISSION OP PEACE. A Warm Reception— Real Freedom— Why Wars Continue— No Ex- cuse for A Soldier — An Appeal to God as Higher Authority — Re- sponsibility of Poets and Historians— Again purchasing Ammunition — Watched — Stratagem and Escape — The Pursuit — Wounding my Horse — Procuring Another— In Camp — Taken Prisoner 362 CHAPTER XXX. DEATH OF PAQUITA. In Prison — A Noble Lawyer — A Night Call — Paquita to the Rescue — The True Savage Heroine — A Week's Work — Released and Free — To the Mountains — A Curse on the City — Shasta City of To-Day — Swim- ming Rivers — The Sacramento — Pitt River — An Ambuscade — A Des- perate Leap — A Struggle for Life — A Shower of Bullets — Cool and deliberate Murder — The Dying Girl — My Poor Paquita — Dead ! Dead —Alas! Alas! Paquita 375 CHAPTER XXXI. THE LAST BATTLE FOR THE REPUBLIC. A Funeral Pile— The "Tale of the Tall Alcade "—Arrival at the Indian Camp — Mourning and Lamentations — A General Despondency — Carrying the War into Africa — Premeditated Attack on Yreka — A Visit to the City — A Settler's Home — Among Christians — A Compari- son — Yreka Defenceless — Yielding to Compassion — A Council of War— A Wrong Decision— Indian Belief in the gift of Prophecy — Klamat Paints his Face Black — Victory or Death — He Reveals a Se- cret—The Doctor Vindicated— A Battle— Death of Klamat— The Reservation or Annihilation — The New Republic Gone — An Indian Chiefs Gift— Away to Nicaragua 390 CHAPTER XXXII. AFTER A DOZEN YEARS. Return to my Old Home — The Stage Coach— A Nervous Man's remark, and the Answer — " How's that for High ! " — Mount Shasta Once More— "Limber Jim"— P. Archibald Brown, alias Ginger— Effects of Hanging, on the Nerves— An Empty Village— Blind Pits— Indian Girls — A Popular Delusion — Indians getting Civilized — Arrival at Camp— An Indian Welcome— A Great Talk— Sad Stories— Indian Eloquence 405 XVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE LAST OF THE CHILDREN OF SHASTA. Reflections — A Little Brown Girl — A Secret — A Search for the Maid- en — The Maiden and her Mother — A Last Farewell — A Battle in my Heart — A Visit to the Doctor — Noble old Man — Self Forgetfulness — A Promise Made — My New Home — Little " Calli Shasta" — The •• Prince" — Peace and Happiness — The Prince's History — Plain James Thompson, yet still a Prince — My Regrets — Return to the World — Origin of " The Modoc War " — Captain Jack — The Reserva- tion — A Night Onslaught — The Peace Commissioners — Following an Example — Undoubted Courage and heroic Deeds— Honesty toward the Indians— The Day of Judgment — A New Thermopylae—" Calli Shasta"— At School in San Francisco— Whose Child is She?— What the Press say — A Possible Joke — What will become of Her? — The Last of the Children of Shasta 419 EL VAQUERO. 33 ten hours a day, leading or following after the horses, camping under the trees, and now and then keeping alternate watch over the stock by night. We were miserably fed, and half frozen while in the mountains, but we soon descended into the quiet Sacramento valley, where the nights are warm with perpetual summer. The old drover, whose great vice was avarice, quarrelled with his men at Los Angelos, whither he had gone to get a herd of Mexican horses after dis- posing of the American stock, to take with him on the back trip, and only escaped by adroitly suing out warrants, and leaving them all there in goal for threatening his life. The cause of the trouble was the old man's avarice. He had made a loose contract with the roving vaqueros, and on settlement refused to pay them scarcely a tithe of their earnings. I remained with him. We returned to the north with a great herd of half-wild horses, driven by a band of almost perfectly wild men : men of all nationalities and conditions, though chiefly Mexicans, all anxious to reach the rich mines of the north. Drovers in this country always leave the line of travel and all frequented roads that they may obtain fresh grass for their stock. In the long, long journey north we passed through many tribes of Indians, and except in the mountains, I noticed that all the 34 EL VAQTJERO. Indians from Southern to Northern California were low, shiftless, indolent, and cowardly. The moment we touched the mountains we seemed to touch a new current of blood. The old man left his motley army of vaqueros mostly to me, and I was practically captain of the caravan. Not unfrequently, of a morning, we would find ourselves short of a Mexican, who had disappear- ed in the night with one of the best horses. Some- times in the daytime these men would get sulky and cross with the cold and cruel old master, and ride off before his face. These men would have to be re- placed by others, picked up here and there, of a still more questionable character. We reached Northern California after a long and lonely journey, through wild and fertile valleys, with only the smoke of wigwams curling from the fringe of trees that hemmed them in, or from the river bank that cleft the little Edens to disprove the fancy that here might have been the Paradise and here the scene of the expulsion. We crossed flashing rivers, still white and clear, that since have become turbid yellow pools with barren banks of boulders, shorn of their overhanging foliage, and drained of flood by ditches that the resolute miner has led even around the mountain tops. On entering Pit River Valley we met with thou- EL VAQTJERO. 35 sands of Indians, gathered there for the purpose of fishing, perhaps, but they kindly assisted us across the two branches of the river, and gave no signs of ill-will We pushed far up the valley in the direction of Yreka, and there pitched camp, for the old man wished to recruit his horses on the rich meadows of wild grass before driving them to town for market. We camped against a high spur of a long timbered hill, that terminated abruptly at the edge of the val- ley. A clear stream of water full of trout, with wil- low-lined banks, wound through the length of the narrow valley, entirely hidden in the long grass and leaning willows. The Pit River Indians did not visit us here, neither did the Modocs, and we began to hope we were en- tirely hidden, in the deep narrow little valley, from all Indians, both friendly and unfriendly, until one evening some young men, calling themselves Shastas, came into the camp. They were very friendly, how- ever, were splendid horsemen, and assisted to bring in and corral the horses like old vaqueros. Our force was very small, in fact we had then less than half-a-dozen men ; and the old man, for a day or two, employed two of these young fellows to attend and keep watch about the horses. One morning three of our vaqueros mounted and rode off, cursing my sour old master for some real or fancied wrong, 36 EL VAQTJERO. and then lie had but one white person with him beside myself, so that the two young Indians had to be retained. Some weeks wore on pleasantly enough, when we began to prepare to strike camp for Yreka. Thus far we had not seen the sign of a Modoc Indian. It was early in the morning. The rising sun was streaming up the valley, through the fringe of fir and cedar trees. The Indian boys and I had just return- ed from driving the herd of horses a little way down the stream. The old man and his companion were sitting at breakfast, with their backs to the high bare wall with its crown of trees. The Indians were taking our saddle-horses across the little stream to tether them there on fresh grass, and I was walking idly towards the camp, only waiting for my tawny young companions. Crack ! crash ! thud ! ! The two men fell on their faces and never uttered a word. Indians were running down the little lava mountain side, with bows and rifles in their hands, and the hanging, rugged brow of the hill was curling in smoke. The Ben Wright tragedy was bearing its fruits. I started to run, and ran with all my might towards where I had left the Indian boys. I remember dis- tinctly thinking how cowardly it was to run and de- sert the wounded men, with the Indians upon them, and I also remember thinking that when I got to the AT A DISADVANTAGE. EL VAQUERO. 37 first bank of willows I would turn and fire, for I had laid hold of the pistol in my belt, and could have fired, and should have done so, but I was thoroughly frightened, and no doubt if I had succeeded in reach- ing the willows I would have thought it best to go still further before turning about. How rapidly one thinks at such a time, and how distinctly one remembers every thought. All this, however, was but a flash, the least part of an instant. Some mounted Indians that had been stationed up the valley darted out at the first shot, and one of them was upon me before I saw him, for I was only concerned with the Indians pouring down the little hill out of the smoke into the camp. I was struck down by a club, or some hard heavy object, maybe the pole of a hatchet, possibly only a horse's hoof, as he plunged in the air. When I recovered, which must have been some minutes after, an Indian was rolling me over and pulling at the red Mexican sash around my waist. He was a powerful savage, painted red, half -naked, and held a war-club in his hand. I clutched tight around one of his naked legs with both my arms. He tried to shake me off, but I only clutched the tighter. I looked up, and his terrible face almost froze my blood. I relaxed my hold from want of strength. I shut my eyes, expecting the war-club to crash through my brain and end the matter at 3S EL VAQUEBO. once, but he only laughed, as much as an Indian ever allows himself to laugh, and winding the red sash around him strode down the valley. My pistol was gone. I crept through the grass into the stream, then down the stream to where it nearly touched the forest, and climbed over and slip- ped into the wood. From the timber rim I looked back, but could see nothing whatever. The band of horses was gone, the Indians had disappeared. All was still. It was truly the stillness of death. The Indian boys, my companions, had escaped with the ponies into the wood, and I stole up the edge of the forest till I struck their trail, and following on a little way, weak and bewildered, I met them stealing back on foot to my assistance. My mind and energy both now seemed to give way. We reached the Indian camp somehow, but I have but a vague and shadowy recollection of what passed during the next few weeks. For the most part, as far as I remember, I sat by the lodges or under the trees, or rode a little, but never summoned spirit or energy to return to the fatal camp. I asked the Indians to go down and see what had become of the two bodies, but they would not think of it. This was quite natural, since they will not revisit their own camp after being driven from it by an enemy, until it is first visited by their priest or EL VAQTJERO. 39 medicine man, who chaunts the death-song and appeases the angered spirit that has brought the calamity upon them. The Indian camp was a small one, and made up mostly of women and chil- dren. It was in a vine-maple thicket, on the bend of a small stream called by the Indians Ki-yi-mem, or white water. By the whites I think it is now called Milk Creek. A singular stream it is ; sometimes it flows very full, and then is nearly dry ; sometimes it is almost white with ashes and fine sand, and then it is perfectly clear with a beautiful white sand border and bottom. The Indians say, that it is also some- times so hot as to burn the hand, and then again is as cold as the McCloud ; but this last phenomenon I never witnessed. The changes, however, whatever they are, are caused by some internal volcanic action of Mount Shasta, from which the stream flows in great springs. The camp was but a temporary one, and pitched here for the purpose of gathering and drying a sort of mountain camas root from the low marshy springs of this region. This camas is a bulbus root shaped much like an onion, and is prepared for food by roasting in the ground, and is very nutritious. Sometimes it is kneaded into cakes and dried. In this state if kept diy it will retain its sweetness and fine properties for months. I could not have been treated more kindly even at 40 EL VAQUERO. home. But Indian life and Indian diet are hardly suited to restore a shattered nervous system and or- ganization so delicate as my own, and I got on slowly. Perhaps after all I only needed rest, and it is quite likely the Indians saw this, for rest I certainly had, such as I never had before or since. It was as near a life of nothingness down there in the deep forest as one well could imagine. There were no birds in the thicket about the camp, and you even had to go out and climb a little hill to get the sun. This hill sloped off to the south with the woods open like a park, and here the children and some young women sported noiselessly or basked in the sun. If there is any place outside of the tomb that can be stiller than an Indian camp when stillness is re- quired, I do not know where it is. Here was a camp made up mostly of children, and what is usually called the most garrulous half of mankind, and yet all was so still that the deer often walked stately and uncon- scious into our midst. No mention was made of my going away or re- maining. I was permitted as far as the Indians were concerned to forget my existence, and so I dreamed along for a month or two and began to get strong and active in mind and body. I had dreamed a long dream, and now began to waken and think of active life. I began to hunt EL VAQUEIW. 41 and take part with the Indians, and enter into their delights and their sorrows. Did the world ever stop to consider how an Indian who has no theatre, no saloon, no whisky shop, no parties, no newspaper, not one of all our hundreds of ways and means of amusement, spends his evening ? Think of this ! He is a human being, full of passion and of poetry. His soul must find some expression ; his heart some utterance. The long, long nights of darkness, without any lighted city to walk about in, or books to read. Think of that ! Well, all this mind, or thought, or soul, or whatever it may be, which we scatter in so many directions, and on so many things, they centre on one or two. What if I told you that they talk more of the future and know more of the unknown than the Christian ? That would shock you. Truth is a great galvanic battery. No wonder they die so bravely, and care so little for this life, when they are so certain of the next. After a time we moved camp to a less dangerous quarter, and out into the open wood. I now took rides daily or hunted bear or deer with the Indians. Yet all this time I had a sort of regretful idea that I must return to the white people and give some account of what had happened. Then I reflected how inglorious a part I had borne, how long I had remained with the Indians, though for no fault of 42 EL VAQUERO. my own, and instinctively knew the virtue of silence on the subject. In this new camp I seemed to come fully to my strength. I took in the situation and the scenery and began to observe, to think, and reflect. Here, for the first time, I found myself alone in an Indian camp without any obligation or anything whatever binding me or calling me back to the Saxon. I began to look on the romantic side of my life, and was not displeased. I put aside the little trouble of the old camp and became as careless as a child. The wood seemed very very beautiful. The air was so rich, so soft and pure in the Indian summer, that it almost seemed that you could feed upon it. The antlered deer, fat, and tame almost as if fed in parks, stalked by, and game of all kinds filled the woods in herds. We hunted, rode, fished and rested beside the rivers. What a fragrance from the long and bent fir boughs. What a healthy breath of pine ! All the long sweet moonlight nights the magnificent forest, warm and mellow-like from sunshine gone away, gave out odours like burnt incense from censers swinging in some mighty cathedral. If I were to look back over the chart of my life for happiness, I should locate it here if anywhere. It is true that there was a little cast of concern in all this EL VAQUERO. 43 about the future, and some remorse for wasted time ; and my life, I think, partook of the Indian's melan- choly, which comes of solitude and too much thought, but the memory of these few weeks always appeals to my heart, and strikes me with a peculiar gentleness and uncommon delight. The Indians were not at war with the whites, nor were they particularly at peace. In fact, they assert that there has never been any peace since they or their fathers can remember. The various tribes, sometimes at war, were also then at peace, so that nothing whatever occurred to break the calm repose of the golden autumn. The mountain streams went foaming down among the boulders between the leaning walls of yew and cedar trees toward the Sacramento. The partridge whistled and called his flock together when the sun went down ; the brown pheasants rustled as they ran in strings through the long brown grass, but nothing else was heard. The Indians, always silent, are un- usually so in autumn. The majestic march of the sea- son seems to make them still. They moved like shadows. The conflicts of civilization were be- neath us. ISTo sound of strife ; the struggle for the possession of usurped lands was far away, and I was glad, glad as I shall never be again. I know I should weary you, to linger here and detail the life we led ; but as for myself I shall never cease to re- U EL VAQUEEO. live this life. Here I go for rest when I cannot rest elsewhere. With nothing whatever to do but learn their language and their manners, I made fast progress, and without any particular purpose at first, I soon found myself in possession of that which, in the hands of a man of culture would be of great value. I saw then how little we know of the Indian. I had read some flaming picture books of Indian life, and I had mixed all my life more or less with the Indians, that is, such as are willing to mix with us on the border, but the real Indian, the brave, simple, silent and thoughtful Indian who retreats from the white man when he can, and fights when he must, I had never before seen or read a line about. I had never even heard of him. Few have. Perhaps ten years from now the red man, as I found him there in the forests of his fathers, shall not be found anywhere on earth. I am now certain that if I had been a man, or even a clever wide-awake boy, with any particular business with the Indians, I might have spent years in the mountains, and known no more of these people than others know. But lost as I was, and a dreamer, too ignorant of danger to fear, they sympathized with me, took me into their in- ner life, told me their traditions, and sometimes show- ed me the u Indian question " from an Indian point of view. EL VAQTJERO. 45 After mingling with these people for some months, I began to say to myself, Why cannot they be per- mitted to remain here ? Let this region be untrav- ersed and untouched by the Saxon. Let this be a great national park peopled by the Indian only. I saw the justice of this, but did not at that time con- ceive the possibility of it. No man leaps full-grown into the world. No great plan bursts into full and complete magnificence and at once upon the mind. Nor does any one sud- denly become this thing or that. A combination of circumstances, a long chain of reverses that refuses to be broken, carries men far down in the scale of life, without any fault whatever of theirs. A similar but less frequent chain of good fortune lifts others up into the full light of the sun. Circumstances which few see, and fewer still understand, fashion the desti- nies of nearly all the active men of the plastic west. The world watching the gladiators from its high seat in the circus will never reverse its thumbs against the successful man. Therefore, succeed, and have the ap- proval of the world. Nay ! what is far better, deserve to succeed, and have the approval of your own con- science. CHAPTER III. THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. IgSyJP NOW stood face to face with the outposts )gk of the great events of my life. Here were the ¥^ tawny people with whom I was to mingle. There loomed Mount Shasta, with which my name, if remembered at all, will be remembered. I had not sought this. I did not dream even then that I should mix with these people, or linger longer here in the shadows of Shasta than I had lingered in camps before. I visited many of the Indian villages, where I received nothing but kindness and hospitality. They had never before seen so young a white man. The Indian mothers were particularly kind. My tattered clothes were replaced by soft brown buckskins, which they almost forced me to accept. I was not only told that I was welcome, and that they were glad to see me, but I was made to feel that this was the case. Their men were manly, tall, graceful. Their women were beautiful in their wild and 46 THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 47 natural, simple and savage beauty beyond anything I have since seen, and I have gone well-nigh the cir- cuit of the earth since I first pitched camp at the base of Shasta. I came to sympathize thoroughly with the Indians. Perhaps, if I had been in a pleasant home, had friends, or even had the strength of will and capacity to lay hold of the world, and enter the conflict successfully, I might have thought much as others thought, and done as others have done ; but I was a gipsy, and had no home. I did not fear or shun toil, but I de- spised the treachery, falsehood, and villany, practised in the struggle for wealth, and kept as well out of it as I could. All these old ideas of mine seem very singular now for one so young. Yet it appears to me I always had them; may be, I was born with a nature that did not fit into the moulds of other minds. At all events, I began to think very early for myself, and nearly always as incorrectly as possible. Even at the time mentioned I had some of the thoughts of a man ; and at the present time, perhaps, I have many of the thoughts of a child. My life on horseback and among herds from the time I was old enough to ride a horse, had made me even still more thoughtful and solitary than was my nature, so that on some things I thought a great deal, or rather observed, while on others — practical things — I never bestowed a moment's time. 48 TIIE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. I had never been a boy, that is, an orthodox, old- fashioned boy, for I never played in my life. Games of ball, marbles, and the like, are to me still mys- terious as the rites in a Pagan temple. I then knew nothing at all of men. Cattle and horses I under- stand thoroughly. But somehow I could not under- stand or get on with my fellow man. He seemed to always want to cheat me — to get my labour for nothing. I could appreciate and enter into the heart of an Indian. Perhaps it was because he was natural ; a child of nature ; nearer to God than the white man. I think what I most needed in order to understand, get on and not be misunderstood, was a long time at school, where my rough points could be ground down. The schoolmaster should have taken me between his thumb and finger and rubbed me about till I was as smooth and as round as the others. Then I should have been put out in the society of other smooth pebbles, and rubbed and ground against them till I got as smooth and pointless as they. You must not have points or anything about you singular or notice- able if you would get on. You must be a pebble, a smooth, quiet pebble. Be a big pebble if you can, a small pebble if you must. But be a pebble just like the rest, cold, and hard, and sleek, and smooth, and you are all right. But I was as rough as the lava rocks I roamed over, as broken as the mountains I in- habited ; neither a man nor a boy. THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 49 How I am running on about myself, and yet how pleasant is this forbidden fruit ! The world says you must not talk of yourself. The world is a tyrant. The world no sooner discovered that the most de- lightful of all things was the pleasure of talking about one's self, even more delightful than talking about one's neighbour, than straightway the world, with the wits to back it, pronounced against the use of this luxury. Who knows but it is a sort of desire for revenge against mankind for forbidding us to talk as much as we like about ourselves, that makes us so turn upon and talk about our neighbours. Be that as it may, I know very well that if all men were permitted to talk about themselves as much as they liked, they would not talk so much about their neighbors. They would not have time. Even ages ago, whenever any man dared come out and talk freely, naturally and fully as he desired about himself, the wits nailed him to the wall with their shafts of irony, until the last man was driven from the green and leafy Eden of egotism, and no one has yet had courage to attempt to retake it. Now I like this great big letter " I," standing out boldly alone like a soldier at his post. It is a sort of granite pillar, it seems to me, set up at each mile, even every quarter if you like, to face you, to be familiar, to talk to you as you proceed, without an 50 THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. interpreter or the intervention of a third party. Modest Caesar! The man who writes of a third person when he means the first is a falsehood. The man who says " we " when he means " I," is a coward, and afraid to go alone. He winces before the wits, and takes shelter behind the back of another person. I wonld rather see a man stand up like Homer's heroes, or a North American Indian, and tell all his deeds of valour and the deeds of all his ancestors even back to the tenth generation, than this. I despise this contemptible little wishy-washy editorial " we." The truth is, it is ten times more pompous than the bold naked soldier-like "I." Besides, it has the disadvantage of being a falsehood ; a slight, slight disadvantage in this age, it is true, but still a disadvantage. I edited a little paper once for a brief period. I was owner, editor, and proprietor. This was dis- tinctly stated at the head of the first column of the paper. It would have been clear to all, even had I desired to take shelter under the editorial "we," that its use was a naked and notorious falsehood. I was young then. I knew nothing of civilization. My education had been greatly neglected, and I could not lie. I stood up the great big pronoun on the paper as thick as pickets around a garden fence. The publication died soon after, it is true, but this proves nothing against the use of the great and popular pronoun. THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 51 Winter was now approaching ; and while I should have been welcome with the Indians to the end, I preferred to consider my stay with them in the light of a visit, and decided to go on to Yreka (a mining camp then grown to the dignity of a city), and try my fortune in the mines. It was unsafe to venture out alone, if not impossible to find the way ; but the two young men who had assisted as vaqueros in the valley set out with me and led the way till we touched the trail leading from Ked Bluffs to Yreka on the eastern spurs of Mount Shasta. Here they took a tender farewell, turned back, and I never saw them again. They were murdered before I returned to their village. The facts of the cruel assassinations are briefly these. The following summer the young men went down into Pit River Valley, then filling up rapidly with white settlers, and there took to themselves wives from the Pit River tribe, with whom the Shastas were on the best of terms. These young fellows had a fondness for the whites, and were very frequently about the settlements. They finally made a camp near some men who were making hay, and put in their time and supported themselves by hunting and fishing, at the same time keeping up friendly relations with the whites by liberal donations of game. One day one of these Indians, with his young 52 THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. wife, went out among the hay makers, and while he was standing there, watching the men at work, two men came np from a neighbouring part of the prairie and shot him down in cold blood, saying only that they knew him and that he was "a damned bad Injun." This is, or was at that time, considered quite suffi- cient excuse for taking an Indian's life on the Pacific. They hid the body under a haycock, and Carried his young and terrified wife to their camp. That evening the other Indian, returning from the hills, came to look after his companion. The two men told him they would show him where he was ; and the young man, still unsuspicious, walked out with them; but when near the hayfield one of the two, who had fallen behind, shot him in the back. The Indian was good mettle, however, and for the first time discerning the treachery, sprang forward upon the other now a little in advance and brought him to the ground. But the poor boy had been mortally shot, and died almost instantly after. The plain cold truth of the matter is these men had seen the two young Indian women, wanted them, and got them after this manner, as did others in similar ways, and no one said nay. This account I had from the lips of one of the very two men alluded to. His name is Fowler. He told it by way of a boast, repeatedly, and to numbers of THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 53 men, while we were engaged in the Pit river war. This Fowler is now married to a white woman, and lives in Shasta county, California. Of such deeds grew the Pit river valley mas- sacre hereinafter narrated. I rode down and around the northern end of the deep wood, and down into Shasta valley. If I was unfit to take my part in the battle of life when I left home, I was now certainly less so. My wandering had only made me the more a dreamer. My stay with the Indians had only intensified my dislike for shopkeepers, and the commercial world in general, and I was as helpless as an Indian. I was so shy, that I only spoke to men when com- pelled to, and then with the greatest difficulty and embarrassment. I remember, lonely as I was in my ride to Yreka, that I always took some by-trail, if possible, if about to meet people, in order to avoid them, and at night would camp alone by the way- side, and sleep in my blanket on the ground, rather than call at an inn, and come face . to face with strangers. I left the Indians without any intention of return- ing, whatever. I had determined to enter the gold mines, dig gold for myself, make a fortune, and return to civilization, or to such civilization as I had known. Stronger men than I have had that same plan. Perhaps one out of twenty has succeeded. 54 THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. I must here make a long digression from the Indian trail. In spite of my resolution to boldly enter the camp or city and bear my part there, as I neared the town my heart failed me, and I made on to Cotton- wood, a mining camp twenty miles distant, on the Klamat, and a much smaller town. After two or three days of unsuccessful attempts to find some opening, I determined to again marshal courage and move upon Yreka. I accordingly, on a clear frosty morning, mounted my pony, and set out alone for that place. I rode down to the banks of the beautiful, arrowy Klamat — misspelled Klamath — with a thousand peaceful Indians in sight. A deep, swift stream it was then, beautiful and blue as the skies; but not so now. The miners have filled its bed with tailings from the sluice and torn; they have dumped, and dyked, and mined in this beautiful river-bed till it flows sullen and turbid enough. Its Indian name signifies the " giver " or " generous," from the wealth of salmon it gave the red men till the white man came to its banks. The salmon will not ascend the muddy water from the sea. They come no more, and the red men are gone. As I rode down to the narrow river, I saw a tall, strong, and elegant-looking gentleman in top boots and red sash, standing on the banks calling to the ferryman on the opposite side. THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 55 Up to this moment, it seemed to me I had never yet seen a perfect man. This one now before me seemed to leave nothing to be desired in all that goes to make the comely and complete gentleman. Yonng — I should say he was hardly twenty-five — and yet thoroughly thoughtful and in earnest. There was command in his quiet face and a dignity in his presence, yet a gentleness, too, that won me there, and made it seem possible to approach as near his heart as it is well for one man to approach that of another. This, thought I, as I stood waiting for the boat, is no common person. He is surely a prince in dis- guise ; may be he is the son of a president or a banker, wild and free, up here in the mountains for pleasure. Then I thought from the dark and classic face that he was neither an American, German, nor Irishman, and vaguely I associated him with Italian princes dethroned, or even a king of France in exile. He was surely splendid, superb, standing there in the morning sun, in his gay attire, by the swift and shining river, smiling, tapping the sand in an absent- minded sort of way with his boot. A prince ! truly nothing less than a prince ! The man turned and smiled good-naturedly, as I dismounted, tapped the sand with his top-boot, gently whistled the old air of " '49," but did not speak. This man was attired something after the Mexican • 56 THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. style of dress, with a wealth of black hair on his shoulders, a cloak on his arm, and a pistol in his belt. The boatman came and took us in his narrow little flat, and set his oars for the other side. A sort of Yankee sailor was this boatman, of a very low sort too; blown up from the sea as sea-gulls are sometimes found blown out even in the heart of the plains: a suspicious-looking, sallow, solemn-faced, bald-headed man in gum-boots, duck-breeches, blue shirt with the front all open, showing his hairy bosom, and with a lariat tied about his waist in the form of a sash. The tall, fine-looking man stepped ashore with a quiet laugh as the boat touched the sand, and said, " Chalk that." These were the first words I had ever heard him utter. The solemn faced ferryman tied his boat in a second, and, stepping boldly up under the nose of the tall man, said fiercely : — " Look here, what do you play me for i Do you think I'm a Chinaman ? You high toned, fine-haired gamblers don't play me — not much, you don't ! " " Don't want to play you, my friend." " Then pay me. Why don't you pay me, and be off?" " Haven't got the tin. Can't come to the centre ! Haven't got the dust. Can't liquidate. That's the reason why." ;*£&2~~'vS?.^i A FORCED BALANCE. THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 57 And here the good-natured tall gentleman again tapped the sand with his boot, and looked down at the river and at the bullying ferryman under his nose. "Then leave your coat; leave your — your pistol, till you come again." The tall man shifted his cloak from his right arm to his left. The ferryman fell back toward his boat. Sailors know the signs of a storm. "Look here," began the tall man, mildly, "I crossed here yesterday, did I not? I gave you a whole cart-wheel, did I not ? a clean twenty dollar, and told you to keep the change and use it in cross- ing poor devils that were out of tin. You don't know me now with no mule and no catenas filled with tin. Forgot what I told you, I should think. Now, you count out my change, or by the holy spoons, I'll pitch you in there, neck and crop, among the salmon." And here the tall man reached for the man in blue who in turn turned red and white and black, and when he had retreated to the water's edge and saw the tall man still advancing and reaching for him, thrust his hand into his capacious pocket and counted down the coin in a very methodical and business-like way, into the hand of the other. Then the tall man laughed good-naturedly, bade the boatman good-bye, came up and coolly tied his 58 THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. coat on behind my saddle, and we set forward up the trail. The tall man hummed an air as he followed in the trail behind my pony, the boatman swore a little as he untied his boat, and the arrowy, silver river shot away towards the sea between its rocky walls, with its thousands of listless, dreamy Indians on its banks. I take it to be a good sign if a strong, good- natured man who has a fair opportunity, does not talk to you much, at first. In fact, as a rule, you should be cautious of over-talkative strangers. Such persons have either not sense enough to keep quiet ; not brains enough to ballast their tongues, as it were, or are low and vicious people who feel their littleness and feel that they mast talk themselves into some consequence. After we had gone on in silence for some time, on turning a point in the trail we saw a man approach- ing from the other direction. A strong, fine-looking man was this also, mounted on a sleek, well-fed mule with his long ears set sharply forward ; a sure sign that he was on good terms with his rider. The mule brayed lustily, and then pointed his two ears sharply at us as if they were opera-glasses, and we a sort of travelling theatre. The man was richly dressed, for the mountains ; sported a moustache, top-boots, fur vest, cloth coat, THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 59 a broad palm hat, and had diamonds in the bosom of his shirt. A costly cloak on his shoulders, yellow buckskin gauntlets, a rich, red sash around his waist, where swung a pair of Colt's new patent, and a great gold chain made up by linking specimens of native gold together, made up this man's attire. His great hat sheltered him like a palm. CHAPTER IV. HIGH, LOW, JACK AND THE GAME. HE man did not notice me, but made straight up to my companion until his mule's opera- glasses nearly touched the tall man's nose, who was now in a little trail at my side. Then the man under the palm-leaf let go the reins, leaned "back as the mule stopped, put his two hands on the saddle pommel, and slowly, emphati- cally, and with the most evident surprise, as he raised one hand and pushed back the palm-leaf clear off his eyes to get a good square look at my compan- ion, said : — " Well — blast — my sisters cat's-tail to the bone ! Is this you, Prince Hal, or is it Hamlet's daddy's ghost ? You back from the war path, afoot and alone ! Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! Spirits of the " And here as if the mention of the first-named in the sentence had suddenly inspired him with a new thought, he leaned forward, unfastened his catenas, 60 HIGH, LOW, JACK AND THE GAME. 61 and drew forth, a long-necked bottle. He drew the cork with his teeth, then held the bottle up to the sun, shut one eye, looked at the contents as if to see that they had the desired bead, handed it to the man he had called Prince Hal, said " Boston's best," and bowed down his head. The Prince took the bottle solemnly, held it up to the light, placed three lingers on a level with the top of the contents, and then slowly raised the bottom towards the sun. A gurgling sound, then the telescope descended, and the Prince took a long breath as he handed the bottle on to me. I had not yet learned the etiquette of the mountain traveller, and shook my head. A hand reached out from under the broad hat, as the Prince returned the bottle in that direction, took it by the neck, shook it gently, tilted it over as the broad hat fell back, and consulted the oracle ; then stuck it back in the catenas. When he had replaced the bottle, he stood in his great wooden stirrups, rattled the bells of steel on his great Spanish spurs, and again eyed my com- panion. " Well damn old roper ! " he again broke forth, " money, mule, and watch all gone, and you afoot and alone ! Well, how on earth did it happen ? And is it really so? Just to think that Prince Hal, the 62 HIGH, LOW JACK man of all others who always made it particular hell for the rest of us, should travel all the way from Yreka to Cottonwood to get a game, and then get cleaned out cleaner than a shot-gun ! Too jolly for anything ! And are you really dead-broke ? "Skinned clean down to the bed-rock. Haven't got the colour," said the Prince, laconically, as he again tapped the dust with his boot. " Well now, do tell a fellow how it happened. I shall hang up at Cottonwood to-night, and if I don't make the sports ante, my name ain't Boston. What did you go through on ? " " Four aces ! " " Four devils ! and what did the other fellow have ? " "A pair!" " A pair of what ? You let him take your money on a pair when you had four aces ? Now come ! On the square — how on earth did you get sinched, any- how ? and did you really have four aces \ " "Yes." " And the other fellow ? " a A pair." "Of what?" " Six-shooters ! " calmly answered the laconic Prince, still tapping at the dust and looking sidewise like, to the right. " Now look here," said Boston earnestly, as he dis- mounted, stood on one foot, and leaned against his A2STD TEE GAME. 63 mule, with tlie broad hat pressed hack and Lis right arm over the animal's neck, " do for the love of Moses tell me all about how this happened ! " Here the Prince stopped looking around, held up his head, laughed a little, and proceeded to state that the night before he had a game with two new gamblers, who claimed to have just come up from Oregon, long-haired and green, as he supposed, as Willamette grass, at twenty dollars a corner. That about midnight he fell heir to four aces, and staked all his fortune, money, mule and watch on the hand. " I really felt sorry for the boys," added the Prince. u It seemed like robbing, to take their money on four aces, and I told them not to set it too deep, but they said they would mourn as much as they liked at their own funeral, and so came to the centre and called me to the board." " What have you got J " u Four aces ! " a Four aces ! and what else ? Skin 'em out, skin 'em out ! " a I put down my four aces before their eyes, when one of them coolly put his finger down on my fifth card, pushed it aside, and there lay the sixth card ! " Boston gave a long whistle, and as he could not push his panama any further back, he pulled it for- ward, and looked up with his nose at Mount Shasta. This was my first lesson in gambling. Here for the 64 HIGH, LOW, JACK first time I learned that any one caught cheating at cards forfeits his stakes. Cheat all you like, but don't get caught. A game at cards, you see, is much like many other things in this respect. The Prince of course remonstrated, but it was no use. He had not been cheating; they had waxed his cards together and he did not detect it till too late. Appearances were against him ; besides a pair of pistols cocked and at hand, decided the matter. He acknowledged himself beat. Took a drink good- naturedly with the crafty gamblers and retired. For the benefit of ladies whose husbands may pro- fess ignorance on this subject, I may state that four aces in a game of poker make a " corner n that cannot be broken. The man in the broad hat slowly mounted his mule, set his feet in the stirrups, stretched his long legs in the tapideros, unbuckled the catenas, and again reached the contents of the right-hand pocket to the Prince, and leaning back as my companion took a refreshing drink again, said u Well — blast my sister's cat's tail to the bone ! " " Prince," said Boston, as he drove the cork home with his palm and replaced the bottle, " you and I have set against each other, night after night, and I have found you a hard nut to crack, you bet your AND THE GAME. 65 life, but to see you skinned to the bed-rock, and by Oregonians at that, is too rough ; and here's my hand on that. You was always best, and I second best, of the two you know, but no matter; take this." And he put his hand down in the other pocket of his catenas, and drew forth a handful of twenties. "Take them, I tell you," as the Prince declined. " You must and shall take them as a friend's loan if nothing else. That is, I intend to force you to take these few twenties, and won't take no for an answer." The Prince took the coins, carelessly dropped them into his pocket, and again tapped the dust with his boot, and looked up at the sun as if he wished to be on his way. Neither of the men had counted the money, or seemed to take any note of the amount. The bottle was again uncorked and exchanged. Boston gathered up the reins from the neck of his mule, settled himself in the saddle, stuck his great spurs in the sinch, and the mule struck out, ambling and braying as he went, with his opera-glasses held directly on the river below. I had not been mentioned, or noticed further. I might have been invisible as air, so far as my presence was concerned, after I declined to take a drink. California gamblers these of the old and early E 66 HIGH, LOW, JACK type. And they were men ! There is no doubt of that. They were brave, honest, generous men. But let it be distinctly understood, that the old race is extinct. These men described were the cream of their call- ing, even at that time when gold was plenty and manhood was not rare. Such men were the first to give away their gains, the first to take part in any good enterprise, not too much freighted with the presence of a certain type of itinerants, so-called " Methodist ministers." In these few first years, they went about from camp to camp, and won or lost their money as the men above described. The man who keeps a gambling den to-day is another manner of man. The professional gambler through most of the Pacific cities of to-day is a low character. The would-be " sport " who would imi- tate these men of the early time is usually a broken- down barber, bar-tender, or waiter in disgrace. A sudden and short-lived race were these. Gay old sports, who sprung up mushroom-like from the abundance and very heaps of gold. Men who had vast sums of money from some run of fortune, and no great aim in life, and having no other form of excitement, sat down and gambled for amusement, until they came to like it and followed it as a call- ing, for a time, at least. All men have a certain amount of surplus energy AND TEE GAME. 67 that must be thrown off against some keen excite- ment. You see how very naturally very good men became gamblers in that time. Their suc- cessors, however, gamble for gold and gain ; too idle to toil and too cowardly to rob, they follow a calling, about the mining camps particularly, that is now as disreputable as it was once respectable, or rather aristocratic. The grand old days are gone. The gay gamblers with their open pockets and ideas of honour ; the fast women who kept the camps in turmoil and commo- tion, are no more. Their imitators are there, but in camps where men would be glad to pay a woman well to wash his shirt, and where every man strong enough to swing a pick can get employment, there is no excuse for the one nor apology for the other. Water will seek its level. As a rule, the low are low — avoid them, particularly in America, more par- ticularly on the Pacific side of America. Give a man five years, and, with unfortunate exceptions of course, he will find his level on the Pacific, and his place, whether high or low, as naturally as a stream of water. Many of our old gamblers took up the law. A great many took to politics ; some advanced far into distinction, even to Congress, and were heard when they got there. Many fell in Nicaragua. One or two became ministers, and made some mark in the world. One is even now particularly famous for his 68 HIGH, LOW, JACK laconic sword-cuts of speech, born of the gambling table, when he is excited and earnestly addressing his congregation of miners in the mountains. As a rule, these men remained true to the Pacific, and refused to leave it. The miners gathered up their gold, and returned to their old homes; the merchants did the same as the camps went down, but these men remained. They have, to use their own expression, mostly " passed in their checks," but what few of them are still found, no matter what they fol- low, are honest, brave old men. Nature had knighted them at their births as of noble blood, and they could not but remain men even in the calling of knaves. It was late in the day when we passed, on one side of the dusty road we had been travelling but a short distance, a newly-erected gallows, and a populous grave-yard on the other. Certain evidences, under the present order of things, of the nearness of civilization and a city. Mount Shasta is not visible from the city. A long butte, black and covered with chapparal, lifts up before Yreka, shutting out the presence of the mountain. It was a strange sort of inspiration that made the sheriff come out here to construct his gallows — out in the light, as it were, from behind the little butte and full in the face of Shasta. AND TEE GAME. 69 A strange sort of inspiration it was, and more beautiful, that made the miners bring the first dead out here from the camp, from the dark, and dig his grave here on the hill-side, full in the light of the lifted and eternal front of snow. Dead men are even more gregarious than the living. No one lies down to rest long at a time alone, even in the wildest parts of the Pacific. The dead will come, if his place of rest be not hidden utterly, sooner or later, and even in the wildest places will find him out, and one by one lie down around him. The shadows of the mountains in mantles of pine were reaching out from the west over the thronged busy little new-born city, as we entered its populous streets. The kingly sun, as if it was the last sweet office on earth that day, reached out a shining hand to Shasta, laid it on his head till it became a halo of gold and glory, withdrew it then and let the shadowy curtains of night come down, and it was dark almost in a moment. The Prince unfastened his cloak from the macheers behind my saddle, and as he did so, courteously asked if I was "all right in town," and I boldly answered, u Oh yes, all right now." Then he bade me good bye, and walked rapidly up the street. If I had only had a little nerve, the least bit of TO HIGH, LOW, JACK practical common-sense and knowledge of men, I should have answered, " No, sir ; I am not all right, at all. I am quite alone here. I do not know a soul in this city or any means of making a living. I have nothing in the world but a half-dollar and this pony. I am tired, cold, hungry, half-clad, as you see. No, sir, since you ask me, that is the plain truth of the matter. I am not all right at all." Had I had the sense or courage to say that, or any part of that, he would have given me half, if not all, the coins given him on the trail, and been proud and happy to do it. I was alone in the mines and mountains of Cali- fornia. But what was worse than mines and mountains, I was alone in a city. I was alone in the first city I had ever seen. I could see nothing here that I had ever seen before, but the cold far stars above me. I pretended to be arranging my saddle till the Prince was out of sight, and then seeing the sign of a horse swinging before a stable close at hand, I led my tired pony there, and asked that he should be cared for. A negro kept this stable, a Nicaragua negro, with one eye, and an uncommon long beard for one of his race. He had gold enough hung to his watch-chain in charms and specimens to stock a ranch, and finger-rings like a pawn-dealer. He was very black, AND THE GAME. 71 short and fat, and insolent to the white boy who tended his horses. I was afraid of this man from the first, instinctively, and without any reason at all. When you fear a man or woman instinctively, follow your instincts. I shrank from this short, black, one-eyed scoundrel, with his display of gold, in a strange way. When he came up and spoke to me, as I was about to go out, I held my head down under his one eye, as if I had stolen something and dared not look into it. Permit me to say here that the idea that the honest man will look you in the face and the knave will not, is one of the most glaring of popular humbugs that I know. Ten chances to one the knave will look you in the eye till you feel abashed yourself, while the honest, sensitive man or woman will merely lift the face to yours, and the eyes are again to the ground. " Look me in the eye and tell me that, and I will believe you," is a favourite saying. Nonsense ! there is not a villain in the land but can look you in the eye and lie you blind. CHAPTER V. IN A CALIFORNIA MIKING CAMP. THINK I was ill. I remember some things but vaguely which took place this night, and the day and night that followed. I am certain that something was wrong all this time ; for, as a rule, when we first land from a voyage, or reach a journey's end, the mind is fresh and strong — a blank ready to receive impressions and to retain them. If you will observe or recall the fact, you will find that the first city you visited in China, or the first sea-port you touched at in Europe, is fixed in your mind more perfectly than any other. But my recol- lection of this time, usually clear and faultless, is shadowy and indistinct. I was surely ill. This black man to me was a nightmare. I stood before him like a convict before his keeper. I felt that he was my master. Had he told me to do this or that I would have gone and done it, glad to get 72 IN A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP. 73 from tinder his one and dreadful eye, that seemed to be burning a hole in my head. The one-eyed black villain knew very well he was torturing me. He took a delight in it. Understand he had not said a word. I had not lifted my eyes. At last he hoisted his black fat hand to his black thick head and turned away. I walked with an effort out into the street. This man had taken my strength ; he had absorbed me into his strong animal body. Here is a subject that I do not understand at all. I will only state a fact. There are men that exhaust me. There are men that if they come into a room and talk to me, or even approach closely, take my strength from me more speedily, and as certainly, as if I spent my force climbing a hill. There are men that I cannot endure; their presence is to me an actual physical pain. I have tried to overcome this — in vain. I have found myself dodging men in the street, hiding around the corner, or flying like a pick- pocket into a crowd to escape them. Good honest men are they — some of them, no doubt, yet they use me up ; they absorb, exhaust me ; they would kill me dead in less than a week. I stole away from the stable and reached the main street. A tide of people poured up and down, and across from other streets, as strong as if in New York. The white people on the side walks, the Chinese and mules in the main street. Not a woman in sight, not 74 IN A CALIFOBNIA a child, not a boy. People turned to look at me as at something new and out of place. I was very hungry, faint, miserable. The wind pitched down from the white-covered mountains, cold and keen, and whistled above the crowds along the streets. I got a biscuit for my half-dollar, walked on, ate it unobserved, and was stronger. Brick houses on either hand, two and three stories high. A city of altogether, perhaps, five thousand souls. I was utterly overcome by the magnitude of the place and the multitude of people. There being but one main street, I kept along this till the further end was reached, then turned back, and thus was not lost or bewildered. I returned to the stable, stronger now, yet almost trembling with fear of meeting the black man with one eye. As a rule, beware of one-eyed people, who have not a strong moral anchor; also beware of cripples, unless they too have a good and patient nature. Fate has put them at a disadvantage with the world, and they can only battle and keep pace with their fellows by cunning. Nine times out of ten they instinctively take to treachery and tricks to over- come this disadvantage. Thai is only natural. On the same principle, woman, who is not so strong as man, resorts to strategy to match him. What she lacks in strength, she makes up in being more than his equal in craftiness. The strong / MINING CAMP. 75 grizzly goes boldly upon his prey, crushing through the chapparal like the march of an army ; the panther lies on a limb, waiting to take it at a disadvantage. A deaf and dumb person is usually a lovable character ; so is one who is totally blind, for these live some- what more within themselves and do not go out to battle with the world, or at least, do not attempt to match it in the daily struggle ; but you put a one-eyed man or a cripple in the fight, and unless he is very good, he is veiy bad indeed. I went up to my pony, standing on three legs with his nose in the hay, put my arms around his neck, talked baby-talk to him, and felt as with an old friend. There was a little opening overhead, a place where they put hay down from the loft. I looked up. An idea struck me. I looked over my shoulder for the negro. No one was there. I climbed up like a cat ; found a hump of hay, crept into it, and was soon fast asleep. It was not a pleasant bed. The wind whistled through the loft, and though I crept and cowered into the very heart of the hay-pile, the frost followed me up unmercifully. I descended with the dawn, lest the negro should be there, and was on the street even before the Chinamen, and long before the sun. A frost was on the ground, and a taste of winter in the air and wind. To the west the pine hills were brown with the 76 IN A CALIFORNIA dead grass, then farther up, green with pine and fir, then white with frost and snow. I walked up the single long street in that direc- tion, the hills began to flash back the sun that glowed from Shasta's helmet, and my heart rose up with the sun. I said, " The world is before me. Here is a new world being fashioned under my very feet. I will take part in the work, and a portion of it shall be mine." All this city had been built, all this country opened up, in less than two years. Twenty months before, only the Indian inhabited here ; he was lord absolute of the land. But gold had been found on this spot by a party of roving mountaineers ; the news had gone abroad, and people poured in and had taken possession in a day, without question and without ceremony. And the Indians? They were pushed aside. At first they were glad to make the strangers welcome ; but when they saw where it would all lead, they grew sullen and concerned. Then trouble arose; they retreated, and Ben Wright took the field and followed them, as we have seen. I hurried on a mile or so to the foot-hills, and stood in the heart of the placer mines. Now the smoke from the low chimneys of the log cabins began to rise and curl through the cool, clear air on every hand, and the miners to come out at the low MINING CAMP. 77 doors ; great hairy, bearded, six-foot giants, hatless, and half -dressed. They stretched themselves in the sweet, frosty air, shouted to each other in a sort of savage banter, washed their hands and faces in the gold-pans that stood by the door, and then entered their cabins again, to partake of the eternal beans and bacon and coffee, and coffee and bacon and beans. The whole face of the earth was perforated with holes ; shafts sunk and being sunk by these men in search of gold, down to the bed-rock. Windlasses stretched across these shafts where great buckets swung, in which men hoisted the earth to the light of the sun by sheer force of muscle. The sun came softly down, and shone brightly on the hillside where I stood. I lifted my hands to Shasta, above the butte and town, for he looked like an old acquaintance, and I again was glad. It is one of the chiefest delights of extreme youth, and I may add of extreme ignorance, to bridge over rivers with a rainbow. And one of the chief good things of youth and verdancy is buoyancy of spirits. You may be twice vanquished in a day, and if you are neither old nor wise you may still be twice glad. A sea of human life began to sound and surge around me. Strong men shouldered their picks and shovels, took their gold-pans under their arms, and went forth to their labour. They sang little snatches 78 IN A CALIFORNIA of songs familiar in other lands, and now and then they shouted back and forth, and their voices arose like trumpets in the mountain air. I went down among these men full of hope. I asked for work. They looked at me and smiled, and went on with their labour. Sometimes, as I went from one claim to another, they would ask me what I could do. One greasy, red-faced old fellow, with a green patch over his left eye, a check shirt, yellow with dirt, and one suspender, asked — " What in hell are you doing here anyhow ?".... My spirit mercury fell to freezing point before night. , At dusk I again sought the rude half -open stable, put my arms around my pony's neck, caressed him and talked to him as to a brother. I wanted, needed something to love and talk to, and this horse was all I had. I trembled lest the negro should be near, and hastened to climb again into the loft and hide in my nest of hay. It was late when I awoke. I had a headache and hardly knew where I was. When I had collected my mind and understood the situation, I listened for the negro's voice. I heard him in the far part of the stable, and, frightened half to death, hastened to descend. When a young bear up a tree hears a human voice MINING CAMP. 79 at the root it hastens down, even though it be perfectly- safe where it is, and will reach the ground only to fall into the very arms of the hunter. My conduct was something like that of the young "bear. I can account for the one about as clearly as for the other. My hat was smashed in many shapes, my clothes were wrinkled, and there were fragments of hay and straw in my hair. My heart beat audibly, and my head ached till I was nearly blinded with pain as I hastened down. There was no earthly reason why I should fear this negro. Reason would have told me it was not in his power to harm me ; but I had not then grown to use my reason. There are people who follow instinct and impulse, much as a horse or dog, all through rather eventful lives, and, in some things, make fewer mistakes than men w^ho act only from reason. A woman follows instinct more than man does, and hence is keener to detect the good or bad in a face than man, and makes fewer real mistakes. When I had descended and turned hastily and half blinded to the door, there stood the one-eyed negro, glaring at me with his one eye ferociously. " What the holy poker have you been a doin' up there ? Stealin' my eggs, eh ? Now look here, you better git. Do you hear?" And he came toward MINING CAMP. 81 humoured way. "How-dy-do? Take a drink?" And he led me into the bar-room. I followed mechanically. In most parts of America the morning salutation is, "How d'ye do? How's the folks?" But on the Pacific it is, " How-dy-do ? Take a drink ?" There was a red sign over the door of the hotel — a miner with a pick, red shirt, and top boots. I lifted my face and looked at that sign to hide my ex- pression of concern from the Prince. " Hullo, my little chicken, what's up ? You look as pale as a ghost. Come, take a smash ! It will strengthen you up. Been on a bender last night; no?" cried an old sailor, glass in hand. There was an enormous box-stove there in the middle of the room, with a drum like a steam boiler above, and a great wood fire that cracked and roared like a furnace. The walls were low, of painted plank, and were hung around with cheap prints in gay colours — of race- horses, prize-fighters, and bull-dogs. One end of the room was devoted to a local picturing, on a plank half the size of a barn door, which was called a Mexican Bull. This name was prudently written at the bottom, perhaps to prevent mistakes. The great picture of the place, however, was that of a grizzly bear and hunter, which hung at the back of the man who dealt out the tumblers behind the bar. This 82 IE A CALIFORNIA picture was done by the hunter himself. He was represented clasped in the bear's embrace, and heroically driving an enormous knife to his heart. The knife was big and broad as a hand-saw, red and running with blood. The bear's fore legs were enor- mous, and nearly twice as long and large as his hind ones. It may be a good stroke of genius to throw all the strength and power in the points to which the attention will most likely be directed. At least that, seemed to be the policy adopted by this artist of the West. An Indian scalp or two hung from a corner of this painting. The long matted hair hung streaming down over the ears of the bear and his red open mouth. A few sheaves of arrows in quivers were hung against the wall, with here and there a tomahawk, a scalping-knife, boomerang and war-club, at the back of the " bar-keep." Little shelves of bottles, glasses, and other requi- sites of a well-regulated bar, sprang up on either side of the erect grizzly bear; and on the little shelf where the picture rested lay a brace of pistols, capped and cocked, within hand's reach of the cin- namon-haired bar-keeper. This man was short, thick- set, and of enormous strength, strength that had not remained untrained. He had short red hair, which stuck straight out from the scalp ; one tooth out in front, and a long white scar across his narrow red MINING CAMP. 83 forehead. He wore a red shirt, open at the throat, with the sleeves rolled up his brawny arms to the elbows. All this seems to be before me now. I believe I could count and tell with a tolerable accuracy the number of glasses and bottles there were behind the bar. Here is something strange. Everything that passed, everything that touched my mind through any source whatever, every form that my eyes rested upon, in those last two or three minutes before I broke down, remained as fixed and substantial in the memory, as shafts of stone. Is it not because they were the last ? because the mind, in the long blank that followed, had nothing else to do but fix those last things firmly in their place; something as the last scene on the land or the last words of friends are remembered when we go down on a long journey across the sea. I have a dim and uncertain recollection of trying hard to hold on to the bar, of looking up to the Prince for help in a helpless way ; the house seemed to rock and reel, and then one side of the room was lifted up so high I could not keep my feet — could not see distinctly, could not hear at all, and then all seemed to recede ; and all the senses refused to struggle longer against the black and the blank sea that came over me, and all things around me. 84 IN A CALIFORNIA The Prince, I think, put out his strong arms and took me up, but I do not know. All this is painful to recall. I never asked anything about it when I got up again, because I tried to forget it. That is impossible. I see that bar, bar-keeper, and grizzly- bear so distinctly this moment, that if I were a painter I could put every face, every tumbler, every- thing there, on canvas as truthfully as they could be taken by a photograph. I remember the room they took me to up-stairs. They spoke kindly, but I do not think I could answer. Every now and then, through it all and in all things, I could see the one-eyed negro. I lay looking at the double-barrelled shot-gun against the wall by the bed, and the bowie-knife that lay beside a brace of pistols on the table ; some decanters on a stand, and a long white pole, perhaps a sort of pick- handle, in the corner, are all that I remember. And yet all this fixed on the mind in an instant ; for soon my remaining senses went away, and returned no more for many, many weeks. There was a little Chinaman, tawny, moon-eyed and silent, sitting by the bed ; but when he saw me lift my hands and look consciously around, his homely features beamed with delight. He sprung up from my side, spun around the room a time or two in his paper slippers, hitched up his blue, loose trousers, and seemed as glad as a country child when AMONG BARBARIANS. MINING CAMP. 85 a parent comes home from town. Then he took up my hand, moved my head, fixed the pillow, and again spun around the room, grinning and showing his white teeth. This little moon-eyed heathen belonged to that race we send so many tracts and missionaries to across the seas ; and was one of those little wretches that the dear children in the cities of the Pacific pelt and pound on Sabbath days with cobble stones, rotten apples, hymn-books, bibles, and whatever comes convenient, as they return home from church and Sunday school. At last, this diminutive Chinaman seemed to come to his senses, and shot out of the door and down the stairs as if flying for a wager, and I slept then and dreamed sweet and beautiful dreams. When I awoke the little heathen had returned. The Prince, more earnest and thoughtful, it seemed to me, than before, was at my side, and with him a sallow, sickly-looking physician in green glasses, and a ruffled shirt. Miners were coming in and going out on tip-toe, holding their slouch hats stiffly in both hands, and making long measured steps as they moved around the bed. I looked for the shot-gun on the wall but it was gone ; a fancy-picture too had disappeared, or possibly, I had only dreamed that such a picture hung on the wall across by the window. The pistols had been 86 IN A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP. taken away, too, from the stand, and the bowie- knife was gone. There was only a book on the stand — a brown, old, leather-bound book. The decanters had been taken away, and a short junk- bottle stood there, doing service for a vase, with a bunch of wild autumn blossoms, and a green fir-twig or two to relieve the yellow of the blooms. CHAPTER VI. DOWN AMONG THE LIVE MEN. CHANGE had certainly come over the actions and, I may say, the mind of the Prince, in the long weeks of my illness. I had fallen into his hands so helplessly and so wholly that I was in a way absolutely his. He did not shift the responsibility, nor attempt to es- cape it. I could not, of course, then understand why my presence, or the responsibility of a young person thrown on him in this way, could have influenced him for good or evil, or have altered his plans or course of life in any way at all. I think I can now. I did not stop to inquire then. It so happens that when very young we are not particular about reasons for anything. It is often a fortunate thing for a man that the fates have laid some responsibility to his charge. From what I could learn the Prince was utterly alone ; — had no one depending on him ; had formed 87 88 DO WN AMONG no very ardent attachments ; expected, of course, to leave the mountains sometime, and settle down as all others were doing, but did not just then care to fix the time, or assume any concern about it. Naturally noble and generous in all his instincts, he fell to planning first for me, and then for himself and me together. He saw no prospect better than that of an honest miner. He shrunk from initiating any one into the art of his own temporary calling, and resolved to possess a mining claim, build a cabin, and enter upon a real life. This made him a new man — a more thoughtful, earnest man, perhaps — no better. Besides, a recollection of his reverses at the Klamat possibly had a little to do in this making up the ^decision to turn over a new leaf in his life. Not the losses, either — he could not care for that ; but, rather, that he felt ashamed to have to do with a calling where men would stoop so low and go to such lengths to procure money. After casting about for many days in the various neighbouring localities, the Prince finally decided to pitch his tent on the Humbug, a tributary of the Klamat, and the most flourishing, newly-discovered camp of the north. It lay west of the city, a day's ride down in a deep, densely-timbered canon, out of sight of Mount Shasta, out of sight of everything — even the sun; save here and there where a land- slide had ploughed up the forest, or the miners had TEE LIVE MEN, 89 mown down the great evergreens about their cabins, or town sites in the camp. Do not doubt or be surprised at this name of Humbug. Get your map and you will see it there — fifty miles or more north-west of Mount Shasta, twenty miles from Greenhorn, thirty miles from Deadwood, and about the same distance from Rogue's Gulch. Hogem, Hardscrabble, and Hell-bent were adjoining, and intervening mining camps of lesser note. I asked the Prince to go down and see about my pony when we were about to set out, but the negro had confiscated him long since — claimed to hav e dis- posed of him for his keeping. " He's eat his cussed head off," said he, and I saw my swift patient little companion no more. On a crisp clear morning, we set out from the city, and when we had reached the foot-hills to the west, we struck a fall of snow, with enormous hare, ears as large almost as those of Mexican mules, crossing here and there, and coyotes sitting on the ground, tame as dogs, looking down on the cabins and camp below. We had, strapped to our saddles behind us, blan- kets, picks, shovels, frying-pans, beans, bacon, and coffee, — all, of course, in limited quantities. The two mules snuffed at the snow, lifted their little feet gingerly, spun around many times like tops, and brayed a solemn prayer or two to be allowed to turn back. 90 DOWN AMONG Snow is a mule's aversion. Give him sand, even the heat of a furnace, and only sage-brush to subsist upon, and he will go on patient and uncomplaining ; but snow goes against his nature. We began to leave the world below — the camps, the clouds of smoke, and the rich smell of the burning juniper and manzanita. The pines were open on this side of the mountain, so that sometimes we could see through the trees to the world without and below. Over against us stood Shasta. Grander, nearer, now he seemed than ever, covered with snow from base to crown. If you would see any mountain in its glory, you must go up a neighbouring mountain, and see it above the forests and lesser heights. You must see a mountain with the clouds below you, and between you and the object of contemplation. Until you have seen a mountain over the tops and crests of a sea of clouds, you have not seen, and can- not understand, the sublime and majestic scenery of the Pacific. Never, until on some day of storms in the lower world you have ascended one mountain, looked out above the clouds, and seen the white snowy pyramids piercing here and there the rolling nebulus sea, can you hope to learn the freemasonry of mountain scenery in its grandest, highest, and most supreme degree. Lightning and storms and thunder under- neath you ; calm and peace and perfect beauty about you. Typical and suggestive. TEE LIVE MEN. 91 Sugar-pines, tall as pyramids, on either hand as we rode up the trail, through the dry bright snow, with great burrs or cones, long as your arm, swaying from the tips of their lofty branches ; and little pine squir- rels, black and brown, ran up and down, busy with their winter hoard. Once on the summit we dismounted, drew the sinches till the mules grunted and put in a protest with their teeth and heels, and then began the de- scent. The Prince had been silent all day, but as we were mounting the mules again, he said — " We may have a rocky time down there, my boy. The grass is mighty short with me, I tell you. But I have thought it all out, clean down to the bed-rock, and this is the best that can be done. If we can manage to scratch through this winter, we will be all right for a big clean up by the time the snows ily over again ; and then, if you like, you shall see an- other land. There ! look down there," he said, as we came to the rim of a bench in the mountain, and had a look-out below, "that is the place wmere we shall winter. Three thousand people there! not a woman, not a child ! Two miles below, and ten miles a-head !" Not a woman ? Not much of a chance for a love affair. He who consents to descend with me into that deep dark gorge in the mountains, and live the 92 DOWN AMONG weary winter through, will see neither the light of the sun, nor the smiles of woman. A sort of Hades. A savage Eden, with many Adams walking up and down, and plucking of every tree, nothing forbidden here ; for here, so far as it would seem, are neither laws of God or man. "When shall we lie down and sleep, and awake and find an Eve and the Eden in the forest ? An Eve untouched and unstained, fresh from the hand of God, gazing at her reflection in the mossy mountain stream, amazed at her beauty, and in love with herself; even in this first act setting an example for man that he has followed too well for his own peace. This canon was as black as Erebus down there — a sea of sombre firs ; and down, down as if the earth was cracked and cleft almost in two. Here and there lay little nests of clouds below us, tangled in the tree- tops, no wind to drive them, nothing to fret and dis- turb. They lay above the dusks of the forest as if asleep. Over across the canon stood another moun- tain, not so fierce as this, but black with forest, and cut and broken into many gorges — scars of earth- quake shocks, and sabre-cuts of time. Gorge on gorge, canon intersecting canon, pitching down to- wards the rapid Klamat — a black and boundless forest till it touches the very tide of the sea a hun- dred miles to the west. THE LIVE MEN. 93 Our cabin was on the mountain side. Where else could it have been but on the mountain top ? No- thing but mountains. A little stream went creeping down below, — a little wanderer among the boulders — for it was now sorely fretted and roiled by the thousands of miners up and down. There was a town, a sort of common centre, called The Forks ; for here three little streams joined hands, and went down from there to the Klamat together. Our cabin stood down on the main stream, not far from the river. The Forks had two butcher's shops ; and each of the rival houses sent up and down the streams two mules each day, laden with their meats ; left so much at each claim as directed, weighed it out themselves, kept the accounts themselves ; and yet, never to my knowledge, in any of the mining camps, did the but- cher betray his trust. A small matter this, you say. No doubt it is. Yet it is true and new. Any new truth is always worthy of attention. I mention this particularly as an item of evidence confirmative of my belief, that we have only to trust man to make him honest, and, on the other hand, to watch and suspect him to make him a knave. The principal saloon of The Forks was the "HowhV Wilderness;" an immense pine-log cabin, with higher walls than most cabins, earth floor, and an immense fire-place, where crackled and roared, day 94 DOWN AMONG and night, a pine-log fire, that refreshes me even to this day to remember. It is true the Howlin' Wilderness was not high- toned, was not even first-class in this fierce little min- ing camp of The Forks ; but it was a spacious place — always had more people in it and a bigger fire than other places, and so was a power and a centre in the town. Besides, all the important fights took place at the Howlin' Wilderness, and if you wanted to be well up in the news, or to see the Saturday evening entertainment, you had to have some regard for the Howlin' Wilderness. The proprietors, who stood behind the bar, had bags of sand laid up in a bullet-proof wall inside the counter, between them and the crowd, so that when the shooting set in, and men threw themselves on the floor, fled through the door, or barricaded their breasts with monte-tables and wooden benches, they had only to drop down behind the bags of sand, and lie there, pistols in hand, till the ball was over. These men were wisely silent and impartial in all misunderstandings that arose. They always seemed to try to quell a trouble, and prevent a fight ; per- haps they did. At all events, when the battles were over, they were always the first to take up the wounded, and do what they could for the dying and the dead. There was a great puncheon, hewn from sugar-pine, that had once been a monte-table, back TEE LIVE MEN. 95 on the outside by the chimney. This was stained with the blood of many. Many bodies had been laid out, in the course of a year, to stiffen on this board. "We will have a man for breakfast to-morrow," some one would say, when shots were heard in the direction of the Howlin' Wilderness; and the pro- phecy was nearly always fulfilled. There was a tall man, a sort of half sport and half miner, who had a cabin close to town, who seemed to take a special interest in these battles. He was known as " Long Dan," always carried two pistols, and took a pride in getting into trouble. "Look here," said Prince to him one evening, after he had been telling his six-shooter adventures, with great delight, by the cabin fire, "Look here, Dan, some of these days you will die with your boots on. Now see if you don't, if you keep on slinging your six-shooter around loose in this sort of a way, you will go up the flume as slick as a salmon — die with your boots on before you know it." Dan smiled blandly as he tapped an ivory pistol- butt, and said, " Bet you the cigars, I don't ! When- ever my man comes to the centre, I will call him, see if I don't, and get away with it, too." Now to understand the pith of the grim joke which Dan played in the last act, you must know that " dying with the boots on " means a great deal in the mines. It is the poetical way of expressing the result of a bar-room or street-battle. 96 DOWN AMONG Let me here state that while the wild, semi-savage life of the mines and mountains has brought forth no dialect to speak of, it has produced many forms of expression that are to be found nowhere else. These sharp sword-cuts are sometimes coarse, sometimes wicked, but always forcible and driven to the hilt. They are even sometimes strangely poetical, and when you know their origin, they carry with them a touch of tenderness beyond the reach of song. Take, for example, the last words of the old Sierra Nevada stage-driver, who, for a dozen years, had sat up on his box in storm or sun, and dashed down the rocky roads, with his hat on his nose, his foot on the brake, and the four lines threaded through his fingers. The old hero of many encounters with robbers and floods and avalanches in the Sierras, was dying now. His friends gathered around him to say farewell. He half raised his head, lifted his hands as if still at his post, and said : — " Boys, I am on the down grade, and can't reach the brake !" and sank down and died. And so it is that " the down grade," an expression born of the death of the old stage-driver, has a meaning with us now. A Saturday or so after the conversation alluded to between Long Dan and the Prince, there were heard pistol shots in the direction of the Howlin 7 Wilder- THE LI VE MEN. 97 ness saloon, and most of the men rushed forth to see what Jonah, fate had pitched upon to be thrown into the sea of eternity, and be the " man for breakfast " this time. Nothing "draws" like a bar-room fight of Cali- fornia. It is a sudden thing. Sharp and quick come the keen reports, and the affair has the advantage of being quite over by the time you reach the spot, and all danger of serving the place of barricades for a stray bullet is past. I have known miners standing on their good be- haviour, who resisted the temptations of hurdy-gurdy houses, bull-fights, and bull and bear encounters, who always wrote home on Sundays, read old let- ters, and said the Lord's Prayer; but I never yet knew one who could help going to see the dead man or the scene of the six-shooter war-dance, whenever the shots were heard. The Prince rushed up. The house was full ; surging and excited men with their hats knocked off, their faces red with passion, and their open red shirts showing their strong, hairy bosoms. " It is Long Dan," some one called out ; and this made the Prince, who was his neighbour, push his way more eagerly through the men. He reached the wounded man at last, and the crowd, who knew the Prince as an acquaintance of the sufferer, fell back and gave him a place at his side. 98 DO WN AMONG THE LIVE MEN, The proprietors of the Howlin' Wilderness had set up the monte- table, which had been overthrown in the struggle, and laid the dying Dan gently there with an old soldier overcoat under his head. When the Prince took up the helpless hand of the poor fellow, so overthrown in his pride and strength, and spoke to him, he slowly opened his eyes, looked straight at the Prince with a smile, only perceptible, hardly as distinct as the tear in his eye, and said in a whisper, as he drew the Prince down to his face : " Old fellow, Prince, old boy, take off my boots." The Prince hastened to obey, and again took his place at his side. Again Long Dan drew him down, and said, huskily, " Prince, Prince, old boy, I've won the cigars ! I've won 'em, by the holy poker !" And so he died. WINNING THE BET. CHAPTER VII. snow! nothing but snow. UCH fearful scenes were the chief diversions of the camp. True, the miners did not, as a rule, take part in these bloody carnivals, but were rather the spectators in the circus. The men at The Forks, gamblers and the like, were the gladiators. Of course, we had some few papers, very old ones, and there were some few novels on the creek ; but there was no place of amusement, no neighbours with entertaining families, nothing but the monotony of camp and cabin-life of the most ungracious kind. As for ourselves, I know the Prince had often hard work to keep his commissary department in tack. The butchers no longer competed for his patronage, and but for fear of his influence to their disadvantage, backed by something of real heart, as these mountain butchers mostly possess to an uncommon degree for men in their calling, they would have left him long ago. We had a claim down among the boulders big as 99 100 SNO W ! NOTHING a barn, at the base of the cabin, in the creek ; but if it contained any gold worth mentioning we had not yet had any real evidence of it. We toiled — let that be understood — we two together. I, of course, was not strong, and not worth much ; but he, from dawn till dark, never took rest at all. He was in earnest — a thoughtful man now. He was working on a new problem, and was concerned. Often at night, by the light of the pine- log tire, I would see the severe lines of thought across his splendid face, and wished that I, too, was a strong man, and such a man as this. Sometimes he would talk to me of myself, lay plans for us both, and be quite delighted to find that I left all to him. I think he was half glad to find I was so helpless and dependent. It was a severe and cruel winter. I remember one Sunday I went down to the claim and found a lot of Calif ornian quails frozen to death in the snow. They had huddled up close as possible ; tried to keep warm, but perished there, every one. Maybe this was because we had cut away all the under-brush up and down the creek and let in the cold and snow, and left the birds without a shelter. The Prince was entirely without money now, and anything in the shape of food was fifty cents and a dollar a pound. The gay gambler was being put to the test. It was a great fall from his grand life of BUT SNOW. 101 the year before. It remained to be seen if lie would be consumed in the fire, or would come out only brightened and beautified. The cold weather grew sharply colder. One morning when I arose and went down to the stream to wash my hands and face, and snuff the keen, crisp air, the rushing mountain stream was still ; not even the plunge and gurgle underneath the ice. It was frozen stiff and laid out in a long white shroud of frost and ice, and fairy- work by delicate hands was done all along the border ; but the stream was still — dead, utterly dead. The strip of sky that was visible above us grew dark and leaden. Some birds flew frightened past, crossing the canon above our heads and seeking shelter ; and squirrels ran up and down the pines and frozen hillsides in silence and in haste. We in- stinctively, like the birds, began to prepare for the storm, and stored in wood all day till a whole corner of the cabin was filled with logs of pine and fir, sweet-smelling juniper and manzanita to kindle with, and some splinters of pitch, riven from a sugar pine seamed and torn by lightning, up the hill. The Prince kept hard at work, patient and cheerful all day, but still he w^as silent and thought- ful. I did not ask him any questions ; I trusted this man, loved him, leaned on him, believed in him solely. It was strange, and yet not strange, con- 102 SNOW I NOTHING sidering my fervid, passionate nature, my inex- perience and utter ignorance of men and things. But lie was worthy. I had never seen a full, splendid, sincere, strong man like this. I had to have some one — some thing — to love; it was a ne- cessity of my nature. This man answered all, and I was satisfied. Had he called to me some morning and said, "Come, we will start north now, through this snow ; " or, " Come, let us go to the top of Mount Shasta, and warm us by the furnace of the volcano there," I had not hesitated a moment, never ques- tioned the wisdom and propriety of the journey, but followed him with the most perfect faith and undoubting zeal and energy. The next morning there was a bank of snow against the door when I opened it. The trail was level and obliterated. Snow ! Snow ! Snow ! The stream that had lain all day in state, in its shroud of frost and fairy-work, was buried now, and beside the grave, the alder and yew along the bank bent their heads and drooped their limbs in sad and beautiful regret ; a patient, silent sorrow. Over across from the cabin the mountain side shot up at an angle almost frightful to look upon, till it lost its pine-covered summit in the clouds, and lay now a slanting sheet of snow. The trees had surrendered to the snow. They no longer shook their sable plumes, or tossed their heads BUT SNOW. 103 at all. Their limbs reached out no more triumphant in the storm, but drooped and hung in silence at their sides — quiet, patient, orderly as soldiers in a line, with grounded arms. Back of us the same scene was lifted to the clouds. Snow ! Snow ! Snow ! nothing but snow! To right and to left, up and down the buried stream, were cabins covered with snow, white and cold as tombs and stones of marble in a churchyard. And still the snow came down steadily and white, in flakes like feathers. It did not blow or bluster about as if it wanted to assert itself. It seemed as if it already had absolute control ; rather like a king, who knows that all must and will bow down before him. Steady and still, strong and stealthy, it came upon us and possessed the earth. Not even a bird was heard to chirp, or a squirrel to chatter a protest. High over head, in the clouds as it seemed, or rather back of us a little, on the steep and stu- pendous mountain, it is true a coyote lifted his nose to the snow, and called out dolefully ; but that, may be, was a call to his mate across the canon, in the clouds on the hill-top opposite. That was all that could be heard. The trail was blocked, and the butcher came no more. This was a sad thing to us. I know that more than once that morning the Prince went to the door and looked up sharply toward the point where 104 SNOW! NOTHING the mule made his appearance when the trail was open, and that his face expressed uncommon concern when he had settled in his mind that the beef supply was at an end. It is pretty certain that the two butchers had been waiting for some good excuse to shut up shop with- out offending the miners, until their claims should be opened in the spring. This they now had, and at once took advantage of the opportunity. In these days no man thought of refusing credit. A man who had said " No credit ! " would have had " no business " in the mines. Any merchant, saloon- keeper, or butcher, who had had the littleness and audacity to have put up the sign " No tick," now so frequent in mining camps and border towns, at that time would have stood a first-rate chance of having his house pulled down about his ears. These men had a strangely just way of doing things in the early days. They did not ask for credit often, but when they did they wanted it, needed it, and woe then to the man who refused. Every man in the camp was told of it, in no modified form, you may be sure ; and that shop and that man were, at the least, shunned thereafter, as if one had been a pest-house and the other the keeper of it. We could mine no more, could pick-and-shovel no more, with frosty fingers, in the frozen ground, by the pine-log fire, down by the complaining, troubled BUT SNOW. 105 little stream. The mine was buried with the brook. I used to think some strange and sympathetic things of this stream, even in our Jiardest battles for a respectable existence on its banks, that gloomy, weary winter. That stream was never satisfied. It ran, and foamed, and fretted, hurried and hid under the boughs and bushes, held on to the roots and grasses, and lifted little white hands as it ran to- ward the Klamat, a stronger and braver brother, as if there were grizzlies up the gorge where it came from. At best, it had but a sorry time, even before the miners came. It had to wedge itself in between the foot-hills, and elbow its way for every inch of room. It was kicked and cudgelled from this foot- hill to that ; it ran from side to side, and worked, and wound, and curved, and cork-screwed on in a way that had made an angler sorry. Maybe, after all, it was glad to fold its little icy hands across its fretted breast, and rest, and rest, and rest, stiff and still, beneath the snow, below the pines and yew and cedar trees that bent their heads in silence by the sleeper. The Kanaka sugar-mat was empty; the strip of bacon that had hung in the corner against the wall was gone, and the flour-sack grew low and sugges- tive. Miners are great eaters in the winter. Snuff the fierce frost weather