r- 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


MY 
 
 OWN 
 
 STORY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOAQUIN MILLER, 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 SONGS OF THE SIERRAS," "THE DANITES, 
 
 "THE ONE FAIR WOMAN," 
 
 "49," ETC., ETC. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 BELFORD-CLARKE CO., PUBLISHERS. 
 1890. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 
 
 JOAQUIN MILLER 
 
 1890. 
 
E 
 MyM 
 
 8 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 
 TO 
 
 THE DEAREST FRIEND OF MY LIFE IN THE SIERRAS 
 
 AND 
 
 LATER WANDERINGS IN THE OLD WORLD, 
 COLONEL JAMES VAUGHN THOMAS, 
 
 OF LEON, NICARAGUA, 
 
 WHO is NAMED AND KNOWN IN THESE PAGES AS 
 "THE PRINCE." 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THIS book is the story of my life among the 
 Indians ; and yet it is not the story, not the half 
 of it hardly the hundredth part of it for each 
 day of those four years was of itself a volume. 
 Personal peril and adventure I have left out largely, 
 because bigger and better things are before us in 
 the sublime scenery and the poetry and pathos of 
 a voiceless race. 
 
 It is a marvel that the writer, with his impetuosity 
 (want of common sense), survived even a portion 
 of those days. For example, returning weary and 
 half-blinded by the snow from an unsuccessful 
 hunt, a chasm was encountered. His companions 
 picked their way cautiously around ; but he auda 
 ciously tried to leap it. By the sheerest chance he 
 struck a narrow ledge some twenty feet below, and 
 was fished out by his Indian companions. " But his 
 hat and gun are still in that bottomless chasm of 
 Mount Shasta. 
 
 (5) 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 Similar incidents by flood and flame, to say 
 nothing of wild beasts and wilder men, both white 
 and red, dot nearly every one of those eventful 
 and most glorious days. But let us lift our faces 
 above them. 
 
 I was living in London at the outbreak of the 
 Modoc war, and it having become known, through 
 the " Songs of the Sierras," that I had once lived 
 with those people, and neighboring tribes, the writ 
 ers from the seat of war gave most wild and 
 romantic accounts of my early history. 
 
 It was said that I was the realjoaquin Murrietta. 
 who had escaped with a price on his head to the 
 mountains. No one seemed to understand why a 
 man should seek to live in the heart of the Sierras 
 for any other purpose than that of plunder. 
 Meantime the demand for books or stories about 
 these Indians, the Modoc war, and the cause of it, 
 was very great in London. 
 
 To throw the fictions of these imaginative writers, 
 and the facts as set forth in a few sketches already 
 written, into a book, was the work of a few weeks. 
 A war of extermination, it seemed to me, was being 
 waged against my best friends, and it was imper 
 ative that I should strike hard and at once. And 
 so, in great haste, and with a confusion of fact and 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 fiction, a volume was brought out by the Queen s 
 Publisher. The first edition was dedicated to 
 Wendell Phillips, and that great orator and humani 
 tarian mounted the forum for the Red Man, as he 
 had for the Black Man. 
 
 The author expected this book to quietly die 
 when it had done its work; but, as it seems deter 
 mined to outlive him, with all its follies and fictions, 
 he has taken it severely in hand, cut off all its 
 fictitious growth, and confined its leaves to the cold, 
 frozen truth: " the truth, and nothing but the truth," 
 If not " the whole truth." 
 
 JOAQUIN MILLER. 
 
 THE HEIGHTS, OAKLAND, CAL., 1890. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. A PREFATORY UNDERSTANDING n 
 
 II. SHADOWS OF SHASTA 18 
 
 III. MY FIRST BATTLE 23 
 
 IV." EL VAQUERO " 30 
 
 V. THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE 43 
 
 VI. IN A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP 53 
 
 VII. DOWN AMONG THE DEAD 63 
 
 VIII. SNOW! NOTHING BUT SNOW 74 
 
 IX. BLOOD ON THE SNOW 85 
 
 X. GIVE Us THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD - 102 
 
 XL SUNSHINE - - 113 
 
 XII. "A MAN FOR BREAKFAST" - 121 
 
 XIII. BONE AND SINEW - 133 
 
 XIV. A STORM IN THE SIERRAS - 138 
 
 XV. A HOUSE TO LET - 145 
 
 XVI. TURN TO THE RIGHT, AS THE LAW DIRECTS 156 
 
 XVII. HOME - - 172 
 
 XVIII. THE LOST CABIN - - 183 
 
 XIX. GOOD-BYE . - 193 
 
 XX. THE LAST OF THE LOST CABIN - 203 
 
 XXL THE EXPEDITION - - - 212 
 
 (9) 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXII. A MAIDEN AND A LETTER - 215 
 
 XXIII. A WILD CAMPAIGN - 227 
 
 XXIV. THE LOST CAPTIVE - - 237 
 
 XXV. UNTOLD TRAGEDIES - - 241 
 
 XXVI. THE DEATH OF PAQUITA - 247 
 
MY OWN STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A PREFATORY UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 THERE are Indians and Indians. A man may 
 fight for some Indians, and fight against other 
 Indians, and yet not be at all in the wrong. At 
 Waterloo, France and England were not friendly. 
 But in the Crimean war, less than half a century 
 later, they stood shoulder to shoulder. If condi 
 tions of this sort can exist among the most civil 
 ized nations, it ought not to be counted so very 
 inconsistent if a boy, thrown among savages, should, 
 in the course of his duty, or even desire, or per 
 haps in the course of what might really be called 
 " diplomacy," be found fighting at one time for 
 and with a certain tribe of Indians, and at another 
 time against another tribe of Indians. And yet 
 an ungrateful and forgetful world will perhaps con 
 tinue to insist that for years the writer of this 
 
12 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 sketch was a savage among savages, and only there 
 for blood and plunder. How cruelly wrong! 
 
 Let it be said, in a single paragraph, that the 
 hand which pens these lines has been raised in six 
 several campaigns for the white men against Indians; 
 that the writer was three times terribly wounded in 
 these wars. 
 
 Some of these battles were fought in Oregon, 
 some in Idaho, some in California. Some are mat 
 ters of record; but for the most part they are per 
 ishing from the memory of man, as the pioneers who 
 bore part with him are perishing from the earth. 
 However, there is one brief record which bears the 
 great seal of the State of California. It is given here 
 because it is brief; not at all because it shows the 
 writer to the best advantage, for this it surely does 
 not; because in the other expeditions he was the 
 leader, and led in name as well as in spirit, while 
 here he is set down as a private soldier. 
 
 HEADQUARTERS ADJUTANT GENERAL S OFFICE, ) 
 
 STATE OF CALIFORNIA, > 
 
 SACRAMENTO, CAL., December 15, 1883. ) 
 
 Joaquin Miller, New York. 
 
 DEAR SIR In answer to your letter addressed to General, now 
 Governor, Stoneman, I have to say that I find on examination of the 
 records on file in this office that you served as a volunteer in one of the 
 early Modoc wars, known as the " Pitt River Expedition," from March 
 the i6th, 1857, to May the 2d, 1857, for forty-eight days. It also 
 appears that you furnished your own horse and equipments. It fur- 
 
A PREFATORY UNDERSTANDING. 13 
 
 ther appears that you arc the only one who took part in said expedition 
 that never received any compensation for his services. The fault is 
 probably your own, in not applying for it. But now, after the lapse 
 of more than a quarter of a century, there is no money in the Treasury 
 for the payment of such claims. Your remedy is by special act of the 
 Legislature of the State of California. 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 
 GEO. B. CROSBY, 
 Adjiiiant General for the State of California. 
 
 [Seal of California.] 
 
 As if I had asked for a certificate of this record 
 for the money there was in it! Still, let some 
 young financier who is apt at arithmetic stop here 
 and calculate how much this one State, to say nothing 
 of Idaho, Oregon, Arizona and the Federal States 
 also, might be owing me now in gold coin. For 
 I never, from any one, or from any source what 
 ever, accepted one cent for my services. Take this 
 one account of California, which she frankly says, 
 under the great seal, is due me, and see what it 
 would amount to at an annual interest for more than 
 thirty years. The pay allowed was five dollars per 
 day for horse and equipments; the same for a man. 
 But compute and compound, after ascertaining the 
 amount due at the rate of ten dollars per day, for 
 " forty-eight days." You will find that a certain 
 great State is owing to a certain humble person 
 nearly all the gold on the great glittering dome of 
 her capitol. Let her people, then her strong, 
 
14 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 new people, who are pushing us older ones off the 
 globe not be too eager to accuse and find fault 
 with the work I have done until that work is in 
 some sort paid for. But now, in order to tell my 
 own true story of my life among the Indians, about 
 which so very much has been written, and about 
 which so very little is known, I must turn back to 
 the beginning. 
 
 A most romantic and restless boy, I ran away 
 from school in Oregon at the age o.f thirteen to the 
 gold mines of California. 
 
 The scene of this narrative lies immediately about 
 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 Mo- 
 doc and Pitt River Indians live at the east and 
 northeast, with the Klamats still to the north. 
 
 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 halfway up the ten- 
 
VIRW np SHASTA. 
 
A PREFATORY UNDERSTANDING. 1$ 
 
 mile trail that then crossed the Siskiyou Mount 
 ains, 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 sum 
 mit. 
 
 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 
 impression. 
 
 My dress was scant enough for winter, and it 
 was chill and dismal. A fantastic dress, too, for 
 one looking to the rugged life of a miner; a sort 
 of cross between an Indian chief and a Mexican 
 vaquero, with a preference for color carried to ex- 
 trenjies. 
 
 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-girl s, on my shoulders. Some of the 
 little firs were covered with snow, and were con 
 verted into pyramids and snowy pillars. 
 
 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 
 
l6 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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 earth, it looked like the first approach of land 
 to another world. Away across a gray sea of clouds 
 that arose from the Klamat and Shasta Rivers, the 
 mountain stood, a solitary island ; white and flash 
 ing like a pyramid of silver ! solemn and majestic, 
 sublime! lonely and cold and white. A cloud or 
 two about his brow, sometimes resting there, then 
 wreathed and coiled about, then blown like ban 
 ners 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. 
 
A PREFATORY UNDERSTANDING. 1 7 
 
 Jealousy is born of an instinctive knowledge of 
 this truth. 
 
 Hood is rugged, kingly, majestic, terrible ! 
 But he is only the head and front of a well-raised 
 family. He is not alone in his splendor. 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 Three Sisters are grouped 
 together about the fountain springs of the Willa 
 mette 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 ado 
 ration a sympathy for his loneliness and a devo 
 tion for his valor an admiration that shall pass 
 unchallenged. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 SHADOWS OF SHASTA. 
 
 As LONE as God, and white as a winter moon, 
 Mount Shasta starts up sudden and solitary from 
 the heart of the great black forests of Northern 
 California. 
 
 You would hardly call Mount Shasta apart of the 
 Sierras; you would say rather that it is the great 
 white tower of some ancient and eternal wall, with 
 nearly all the white walls overthrown. 
 
 It has no rival! There is not even a snow- 
 crowned subject in sight of its dominion. A shin 
 ing pyramid in mail of everlasting frosts and ice, 
 the sailor sometimes, in a day of singular clear 
 ness, 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 the arid sage-brush 
 plains, and lifts his hands in silencers in answer to 
 a sign. 
 
 Column upon column of storm-stained tamarack, 
 strong-tossing pines, and warlike looking firs have 
 
 (18) 
 
SHADOWS OF SHASTA. IQ 
 
 rallied here. They stand with their backs against 
 this mountain, frowning down dark-browed, and 
 confronting the face of the Saxon. They defy the 
 advance 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 Amer 
 ica! What if this should be the old guard gath 
 ered here, marshaled around their emperor in 
 plumes and armor, that may die but not surren 
 der ! 
 
 Ascend this mountain, stand against the snow 
 above the upper belt of pines, and take a glance 
 below. 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 sinksand declines gradually, but still main 
 tains its column of dark-plumed grenadiers, till the 
 Sacramento Valley is reached, nearly ahundred 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 
 ful. On the east, the forest still keeps up unbroken 
 
22 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 women without mercy, men without reason, brand 
 them with the appropriate name of savages. 
 
 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 the 
 intelligence to communicate his observations 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 woman 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. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 MY FIRST BATTLE. 
 
 As I DESCENDED the stupendous and steep 
 mountain that fronted the matchless and magni 
 ficent glory of Mount Shasta, I fell in with an old 
 mountaineer by the name of " Mountain Joe," one 
 of Fremont s former guides, who was on his way 
 with a small party of Mexicans to the Rio Grande 
 to get a band of wild, or rather half-wild, Mexican 
 horses. 
 
 I was a timid lad, friendless and almost penniless. 
 I got acquainted with the old mountaineer, as our 
 roads lay together, and was glad to accept his offer 
 to go along and become a vaquero. 
 
 Soon we reached his ranch, Soda Springs, on 
 the headwaters of the Sacramento river, and here 
 sat down to rest and recruit our horses. 
 
 We had not been here long, however, till a band 
 of hostile Indians descended from Castle Rocks, 
 during our temporary absence, and not only plun 
 dered our camp, but burned it to the ground. 
 
 The few gold hunters along the river formed a 
 
 company, and, along with some friendly Indians, all 
 
 (33) 
 
24 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 under the lead of Mountain Joe, stealthily fol 
 lowed the hostile savages up into their very strong 
 and seemingly impregnable fortress; and there I 
 saw my first real battle with Indians. 
 
 This" castle "is the most picturesque object in all 
 the magnificent scenery of northern California. It 
 sits on a high mountain, and is formed of gray 
 granite blocks and spires, lifting singly and in 
 groups thousands of feet from the summit of the 
 mountain. Most of these are inaccessible. Here 
 the Indians locate the abode of the devil. Hence 
 its name, " the Devil s Castle." 
 
 All of us were on foot, as the Castle cannot be 
 approached by horsemen. We reached Castle 
 Lake, a sweet, peaceful place, overhung by mount 
 ain cypress and sweepingcedars, without adventure. 
 This is a spot the Indians will not visit, for fear of 
 the evil spirits which they are certain inhabit the 
 place. Our Indian allies sat down in the wood 
 overlooking the lake, while we descended, drank 
 of the cool, deep water, and refreshed ourselves 
 for the combat, since the spies had just returned 
 and reported the hostile camp only an hour dis 
 tant. The enemy was not dreaming of our ap 
 proach, and we were in position, almost surround 
 ing the camp, before we were discovered. 
 
MY FIRST BATTLE. 25 
 
 When we came near, Mountain Joe distributed 
 us behind the rocks and trees in range of and 
 overlooking the camp. The ground was all densely 
 timbered, and covered with a thick growth of black, 
 stiff chaparral, save one spot of a few acres, by the 
 side of which the Indians were camped, at the foot 
 of a little hill. 
 
 I was placed by Mountain Joe behind a large 
 pine, and alone. He spoke kindly as he left me, 
 and bade me take care of myself. 
 
 I put some bullets in my mouth, and made all 
 preparation to do my part. It seemed like an age 
 before the fight began. I could hear my heart beat 
 like a little drum. 
 
 The Indians certainly had not the least suspi 
 cion of danger. They were, it seemed, as much 
 off their guard as possible. They evidently 
 thought their camp, if not impregnable, beyond our 
 reach and discovery. They owed the latter to their 
 own race. 
 
 At last we were discerned, as some of the most 
 daring and experienced were stealing closer and 
 closer to the camp, and the wild Indians sprang to 
 their arms with whoops and yells that lifted my hat 
 almost from my head. 
 
26 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 The yells were answered. Rifles cracked around 
 the camp, and arrows came back in showers. 
 
 " Close up ! " shouted Mountain Joe, and we left 
 cover and advanced. I think I must have swal 
 lowed the bullets I had put in my mouth, for I 
 loaded fro n my pouch as usual, and thought of 
 the bullets in my mouth no more as we moved 
 down upon the yelling Indians. 
 
 A little group of us gathered behind some rocks. 
 Then a man came creeping to us through the brush 
 to say that the other side of our company was 
 being pressed. Then another came to say that 
 Mountain Joe had been struck across the face by an 
 arrow, and his eyes were so injured that he could 
 not direct the fight. 
 
 We wound our blankets about our breasts and 
 bodies, so as to guard against arrows, but our 
 heads were unprotected. 
 
 Suddenly the arrows came, whiz, whistle, thud, 
 right in our faces. 
 
 I fell senseless. After a while I felt men pulling 
 me by my shoulders. I could hear and understand 
 but could not see or rise. It seemed to me they 
 were trying to twist my neck from my body. Yet 
 I felt no great pain, only a numbness and utter 
 helplessness. 
 
MY FIRST BATTLE. 2/ 
 
 " Help me pull it out," said one. They pulled. 
 
 " No, you must cut off the point, and then pull 
 it back." 
 
 Then they cut and pulled, and the blood spurted 
 out and rattled on the leaves. 
 
 " Poor boy, he s done for." 
 
 I could now see, but was still helpless. Haifa 
 dozen men stood around leaning on their rifles, 
 looking at me, then around them, as if for the 
 enemy, but the little battle was over. By the side 
 of m^, with his head in a man s lap, lay a young 
 man, James Lane, with an arrow-shot near the eye. 
 He died of his wound. 
 
 An arrow had struck me in the left side of the 
 face, struck the teeth, and then glanced around 
 and came out at the back of the neck. The wound 
 certainly looked as if it must be mortal, but the 
 jugular vein was not touched, and there was hope. 
 I was dizzy, and sometimes senseless. This, per 
 haps, was because the wound was so near the 
 brain. I constantly thought I was on the mountain 
 slope overlooking home, and kept telling the men 
 to go and bring my mother. We had no surgeon, 
 and the men tied up our wounds as best they could 
 in tobacco saturated in saliva. 
 
28 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 That night the Indian camp was plundered and 
 burnt. 
 
 In the morning one kind but mistaken old fellow 
 brought a leather bag, and held it up haughtily be 
 fore my eyes in his left hand, while he tapped it 
 gently with his bowie-knife. The blood was ooz 
 ing through the seams of the bag, and trickling at 
 his feet. 
 
 " Them s scalps." 
 
 I grew sick at the sight. 
 
 The wounded were carried on the backs of 
 squaws that had been taken in the fight. A very 
 old and wrinkled woman carried me on her back 
 by setting me in a large buckskin, with one leg on 
 each side of her body, and then supporting the 
 weight by a broad leather strap passed across her 
 brow. This was not uncomfortable, all things con 
 sidered. In fact, it was by far the best thing that 
 could be done. 
 
 The first half-day the old woman was " sulky," 
 as the men called it ; possibly the wrinkled old 
 creature could feel, and was thinking of her 
 dead. 
 
 In the afternoon I began to rally, and spoke to 
 her in her own tongue. Then she talked and 
 talked, and mourned, and would not be still. 
 
MY FIRST BATTLE. 29 
 
 " You." she moaned, " have killed all my boys, and 
 burnt up my home." 
 
 I ventured to protest that they had first rob 
 bed us. 
 
 " No ; " she said, " you first robbed us. You drove 
 us from the river. We could not fish, we could not 
 hunt. We were hungry and took your provisions to 
 eat. My boys did not kill you. They could have 
 killed you a hundred times, but they only took 
 things to eat, when they could not get fish and things 
 on the river." 
 
 We reached the Sacramento, and pitched camp on 
 the bank of the river under some sweeping cedars 
 below the site of the present hotel on the Lower 
 Soda Spring ranch. Here I lay till able to travel. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " EL VAQUERO." 
 
 ONCE again in the saddle, we made good time on 
 our well-rested horses, and in a few weeks were on 
 the waters of the Gila River. 
 
 We spent the winter in Arizona and Mexico, 
 and by the springtime Mountain Joe and his 
 Mexican friends had a band of horses numbering 
 many hundreds. We made our way back to north 
 ern California slowly; for we had much trouble 
 with bad men, who wanted to get money out of the 
 Mexicans. Indeed, they were constantly robbing 
 the Mexicans, either by- process of law, or other 
 wise. It was almost a daily occurrence for some 
 Americans to swear out a warrant, or other process, 
 accuse the Mexicans of stealing horses, and make 
 them pay heavily, either in money or horses, to be 
 allowed to go on. 
 
 Finally, after many losses and much bad luck, 
 Mountain Joe took a few of the remaining horses and 
 returned to his ranch at Soda Springs, near where 
 the battle had been fought, and left me with two. 
 not over good-natured Mexicans. 
 
" EL VAQUERO." 31 
 
 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 hank that cleft the little Edens to disprove 
 the fancy that here might have been the Paradise, 
 and here the scene of the expulsion. 
 Wj crossed flashing rivers, still white and clear, 
 that since have become turbid yellow pools with 
 barren banks of boulders, shorn of their overhang 
 ing foliage, and drained of flood by ditches that 
 the resolute miner has led even around the mount 
 ain tops. 
 
 On entering Pitt River Valley we met with thou 
 sands of Indians, gathered there for the purpose of 
 fishing, but they kindly assisted us across the two 
 branches of the river, and gave no sign of ill-will. 
 
 We pushed far up the valley in the direction of 
 Yreka, and there pitched camp, for the Mexicans 
 wished to recruit their horses on the rich meadows 
 of wild grass before driving them to town for 
 market. 
 
 We camped against a high spur of a long, tim 
 bered hill, that terminated abruptly at the edge of 
 the valley. A clear stream of water full of trout, 
 with willow-lined banks, wound through the length 
 
32 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 of the narrow valley, entirely hidden in the long 
 grass and leaning willows.. 
 
 The Pitt River Indians did not visit us here, 
 neither did the Modocs, and we began to hope we 
 were entirely hidden, in the deep, narrow little 
 valley, from all Indians, both friendly and unfriendly, 
 until one evening some young men, calling them 
 selves Shastas, came into the camp. They were 
 very friendly, however; were splendid horsemen, 
 and assisted to bring in and corral the horses like 
 old vaqueros. 
 
 Our force was very small, and the Mexicans 
 employed two of these young fellows to attend and 
 keep watch about the horses. 
 
 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 
 returned from driving the herd of horses a little 
 way down the stream. The two Mexicans were sit 
 ting 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 
 
" EL VAQUERO." 33 
 
 tether them there on fresh grass, and I was walking 
 idly toward 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 curl 
 ing in smoke. 
 
 I started to run, and ran with all my might 
 toward where I had left the Indian boys. I 
 remember distinctly thinking how cowardly it 
 was to run and desert the wounded men, with 
 the Indians upon them, and I also remember think 
 ing, that, when I got to the 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 reaching the willows, I would have thought it 
 be,st 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 
 
34 MV OWN STORY. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 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 
 slipped into the wood. 
 
 From the timber rim I looked back, but could see 
 nothing whatever. The band of horses was gone, 
 
I RELAXED MY HOLD FOR WANT OF STRENGTH. 
 
" EL VAQUERO." 35 
 
 the Indians had disappeared. All was still. It was 
 truly the stillness of death. 
 
 The Indian boys, my companions, had escaped 
 with their ponies into the wood, and I stole up the 
 edge of the forest till I struck their trail, and fol 
 lowing 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 in the lodges 
 or under the trees, or rode a little, but never sum 
 moned 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. 
 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 
 medicine man, who chants 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. 
 
36 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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 bulbous 
 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 dry, it will retain 
 its sweetness and fine properties for months. 
 
 I could not have been treated more kindly even 
 at home. But Indian life and Indian diet are 
 hardly suited to restore a shattered nervous system 
 and organization so delicate as was 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 
 
" EL VAQUERO." 37 
 
 can be stiller than an Indian camp when stillness 
 is required, 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 unconscious, into our midst. 
 
 No mention was made of my going away or 
 remaining. 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 
 and take part with the Indians, and enter into 
 their delights and their sorrows. 
 
 Did the world ever stop to consider how an In 
 dian who has no theater, 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 miftd, or thought, or soul, or 
 whatever it may be, which we scatter in so many 
 
38 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 directions, and on so many things, they center 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 lit 
 tle for this life, when the^ are so certain of the next. 
 
 After a time we moved camp to a less gloomy 
 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 
 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 I found myself alone in an Indian camp 
 without any obligation or anything whatever bind 
 ing me or calling me back to the Saxon. I began 
 to look on the romantic* side of my life, and was 
 not displeased. 
 
" EL VAQUERO." 39 
 
 The woods 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 rilled the 
 woods in herds. 
 
 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 odors 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 about the future, and some remorse for 
 wasted time; and my life, I think, partook of the 
 Indian s melancholy, which comes of solitude and 
 too much thought, but the memory of these few 
 months 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 
 
40 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 nothing whatever occurred to break the calm repose 
 of the golden autumn. 
 
 The mountain streams wentfoaming 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 
 season seemed to make them still. They moved like 
 shadows. The conflicts of civilization were beneath 
 us. No sound of strife; the struggle for the posses 
 sion 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-live this 
 life. 
 
 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 cunning, 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 ail my life more or less with the 
 
" EL VAQUERO." 41 
 
 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 
 
 O 
 
 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. 
 
 A very few 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 cer 
 tain, 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 mount 
 ains, 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 inner life, told me their 
 traditions. 
 
 I began to say to myself, Why cannot they be 
 permitted to remain here? Let this region be un- 
 traversed 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 conceive the possibility of rt. 
 
 No man leaps full-grown into the world. No 
 great plan bursts into full and complete magnifi 
 cence and at once upon the mind. Nor does any 
 
42 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 one suddenly become this thing or that. A com 
 bination 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 under 
 stand, fashion the destinies of nearly all the active 
 men of the plastic world. 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 approval 
 of the world. Nay ! what is far better, deserve to 
 succeed, and have the approval of your own con 
 science. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 
 
 I NOW stood face to face with the outposts 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 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 buck 
 skins, which they almost forced me to accept. I 
 was not only told that I was welcome, and that 
 they were so 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, and 
 their wild and natural, simple and savage beauty 
 was beyond anything I have since seen, and I have 
 twice gone the circuit of the earth since I first 
 pitched camp at the base of Shasta. 
 
 I came to sympathize thoroughly with the In 
 dians. Perhaps, if I had been in a pleasant home, 
 
 (43) 
 
44 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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 gypsy, and had no home. I did not 
 fear or shun toil, but I despised the treachery and 
 falsehood practiced in the struggle for wealth, and 
 kept as well out of it as I could. 
 
 All these ideas of mine seem very singular now 
 for one so young. Yet it appears to me I always 
 had them ; maybe, I was born with a nature that 
 did not fit into the molds of other minds. At all 
 events, I began to think very early for myself, and 
 nearly always as impracticably 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 horse 
 back 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 other things, practical 
 things, I never bestowed a moment s time. I had 
 never been a boy, that is, an orthodox, old-fash 
 ioned boy, for I never played in my life. Games 
 of ball, marbles, and the like, are to me still mys- 
 
THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 45 
 
 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 
 understand or get on with my fellow-man. He 
 seemed to always want to cheat me to get my 
 labor for nothing. I could appreciate and enter 
 into the heart of an Indian. Perhaps it was be 
 cause 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 noticeable 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, 
 
46 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 as broken as the mountains I inhabited; neither a 
 man nor a boy. 
 
 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 delightful of all things was the pleasure of 
 talking about one s self, even more delightful than 
 talking about one s neighbor, 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 neighbors ? 
 
 * * * * * * # 
 
 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 impos 
 sible 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 
 
THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 47 
 
 from Red Bluffs to Yreka, on the eastern spurs of 
 Mount Shasta. Here they took a tender farewell, 
 turned back, and I never saw them again. 
 *#**#** 
 
 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 more so. My 
 wandering had only made me the more a dreamer. 
 My stay with the Indians had only intensified my 
 dislike for money-makers, 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 
 compelled 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 wayside, and sleep in my blanket on the ground, 
 rather than 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. 
 
 In spite of my resolution to boldly enter the camp 
 or city and bear my part there, as I neared the town 
 
48 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 my heart failed me, and I made on to Cottonwood, 
 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 many peace 
 ful 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 andturbid 
 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 w.ater 
 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 gentleman in top boots and silk sash, stand 
 ing on the banks calling to the ferryman on the 
 opposite side. 
 
THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 49 
 
 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 gentlemen. 
 Young 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, 
 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 
 disguise; wild and free, up here in the mountains 
 for pleasure. 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 ab 
 sent-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. 
 
 He was attired something after the Mexican 
 style of dress, with a wealth of black hair on his 
 
5O MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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. The 
 handsome stranger spoke to me pleasantly, and I 
 was more than pleased when he accepted my offer 
 to " ride and tie," as we trudged on toward the 
 city together. 
 
 It was late in the day when we passed on one 
 side of the dusty road we had been traveling but a 
 short distance, a newly erected gallows, and a popu 
 lous graveyard on the other. Certain evidences, 
 under the present order of things, of tlie nearness 
 of civilization. 
 
 Mount Shasta is not visible from the city. A 
 long butte, black, and covered with chaparral, 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 lace of Shasta. 
 
 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 
 
THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE. 51 
 
 grave here on the hillside, 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 popu 
 lous 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 then the 
 shadowy curtains of night came down, and it was 
 dark almost in a moment. 
 
 The Prince unfastened his cloak from the ma- 
 cheers behind my saddle, and, as he did so, cour 
 teously asked if I was " all right in town," and I 
 boldly answered, " 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 
 
52 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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-dol 
 lar 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 his 
 all, 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. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IN A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP. 
 
 I 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 seaport you touched at in Europe, is 
 fixed in your mind more perfectly than any other. 
 But my recollection of this time, usually clear and 
 faultless, is shadowy and indistinct. I was so 
 weary that I slid down into the manger, under the 
 nose of my pony, and lay there shivering and 
 half doubled up all night. I was surely ill. 
 
 I stole away from the stable at dawn , 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 sidewalks, the 
 
 (53) 
 
54 MY OWN, STORY. 
 
 Chinese and mules in the main street. Not a 
 woman in sight, not 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 loaf of bread for my half-dollar, 
 walked on, ate it unobserved, and was stronger. 
 
 I walked up the single long street in that direction, 
 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; 
 
IN A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP. 55 
 
 but, when they saw where it would all lead, they 
 grew sullen and concerned. 
 
 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 
 doors; great hairy, bearded, six-foot giants, hat- 
 less, and half-dressed. 
 
 They stretched themselves in the sweet, frosty 
 air, shouted to each other in a sort of savage ban 
 ter, 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 again was glad. 
 
 It is one of the chiefest delights of extreme 
 
56 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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 buoy 
 ancy 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 
 round me. Strong men shouldered their picks and 
 shovels, took their gold-pans under their arms, and 
 went forth to labor. They sang little snatches 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 labor. 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 ? " 
 
 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 a brother. I wanted, needed 
 something to love and talk to, and this horse was 
 all I had. 
 
IN A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP. S7 
 
 Pretty soon the man who kept the stable, a 
 negro, came in and bullied me roundly for having 
 slept in the manger. I waited till he turned away, 
 and then hastened to climb into the loft, and hide 
 in a nest of hay. 
 
 It was late when I awoke. I had a headache, 
 and hardly knew where I was. When I had col 
 lected 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, 
 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 
 
58 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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 who 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 negro, 
 glaring at me 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 
 me. " I know you; do you hear? I know you 
 stole dat hoss. Now you git. " 
 
 What should I do? What did I do? Iran! A 
 boy s legs, like a mule s heels, answer many argu 
 ments. They are his last resort, and often his first. 
 Deprive him of everything else, but leave him his 
 legs, and he will get on. 
 
 I was not strong. I was not used to making my 
 way through a crowd, and got on slowly. I ran 
 against men coming down the street with picks and 
 pans, and they swore lustily. I ran against China- 
 
IN A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP. 59 
 
 men, with great baskets on their bamboo poles, 
 who took it in good part and said nothing. I 
 expected every moment this black man would seize 
 me in his black hands, and lug me off to a prison. 
 .1 was surely delirious. 
 
 At last, when near the hotel, I took time to look 
 over my shoulder. I could see nothing of him; 
 he perhaps had not left the stable. 
 
 As I passed the hotel the Prince came out. He 
 had slept and rested these two nights, and looked 
 fresh as the morning. 
 
 " How-dy-do? " said the Prince, in his quiet, good- 
 humored 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 
 expression 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. 
 
60 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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 colors 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. 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 picture was 
 done by the hunter himself. He was represented 
 clasped in the bear s embrace, and heroically driv 
 ing an enormous knife to his heart. The knife was 
 big and broad as a handsaw, red and running with 
 blood. The bear s forelegs were enormous, 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 atten 
 tion 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 
 
IN A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP. 6 1 
 
 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 tom 
 ahawk, a scalping-knife, boomerang and a 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 cinnamon- 
 haired barkeeper. 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 
 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 be- 
 
62 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 fore I broke down, remained as fixed and substan 
 tial 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. 
 
 The Prince, I think, put out his strong arms and 
 took me up, but I do not know. All this is pain 
 ful 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, barkeeper, and 
 grizzly bear so distinctly this moment, that, if I were 
 a painter, I could put every face, every tumbler, 
 everything there, on canvas as truthfully as" they 
 could be taken by a photograph. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DOWN AMONG THE DEAD. 
 
 A CHANGE had suddenly come over the actions, 
 and, I may say, the mind of the Prince. He saw 
 that I was alone, friendless, helpless. He put out 
 his hand and drew me to his heart. He made me 
 his own. 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 
 escape 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 anyway 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 rea 
 sons 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 
 
 no very ardent attachments; expected, of course, 
 
 (63) 
 
64 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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. For, be it known, this 
 man was, or had been, a gambler. 
 
 After casting about for many days in the 
 various neighboring localities, the Prince finally 
 decided to pitch his tent on 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 plowed up the forest, or the miners had 
 mown down the great evergreens about their cab 
 ins, or town sites in the camp. 
 
 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 have 
 disposed 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 morning, we set out from the city, 
 
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD. 65 
 
 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, 
 blankets, 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. 
 
 Snow is a mule s aversion. Give him sand, even 
 the heat of a furnace, and only sage-brush to sub 
 sist upon, and he will go on patient and uncom 
 plaining; 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 mount 
 ain, 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. 
 
 5 
 
66 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 If you would see any mountain in its glory, 
 you must go up a neighboring 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 cannot 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 pyra 
 mids piercing here and there the rolling, nebulous 
 sea, can you hope to learn the freemasonry of 
 mountain scenery in its grandest, highest and most 
 supreme degree. Lightning and storms and thun 
 der underneath you; calm and peace and perfect 
 beauty about you. Typical and suggestive. 
 
 Sugar-pines, tall as pyramids, on either hand as 
 we rode up the trail, through the dry, bright snow, 
 with great burs or cones, long as your arm, sway 
 ing from the tips of their lofty branches ; and little 
 pine squirrels, black and brown, ran up and down 
 busy with their winter hoard. 
 
 Once on the summit, we dismounted, drew the 
 cinches till the mules grunted and put in a protest 
 
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD. 67 
 
 with their teeth and heels, and then began the 
 descent. 
 
 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 
 snows fly over again ; and then, if you like, you 
 shall see another 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 where we shall winter. Three thousand peo 
 ple there! not a woman, not a child! Two miles 
 below, and ten miles ahead ! " 
 
 Not a woman ? Not much of a chance for a 
 love affair. He who consents to descend with me 
 into the deep, dark gorge in the mountains, and 
 live the 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. 
 
68 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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 exam 
 ple for man that he has followed too well for his 
 own peace. 
 
 This canon was as black as Erebus down there 
 a sea of somber 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 treetops, no wind to drive them, 
 nothing to fret and disturb. They lay above the 
 dusk of the forest as if asleep. Over across the 
 canon stood another mountain, not so fierce as 
 this, but black with forest, and cut and broken into 
 many gorges scars of earthquake shocks, and 
 saber-cuts of time. Gorge on gorge, canon inter 
 secting canon, pitching down toward the rapid 
 Klamat a black and boundless forest till it 
 touches the very tide of the sea a hundred miles 
 to the west. 
 
 Our cabin was on the mountain side. Where else 
 could it have been but on the mountain top? 
 Nothing but mountains. A little stream went 
 
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD. 69 
 
 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 center, 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 principal saloon of The Forks was the 
 " Howlin Wilderness; " an immense pine-log cabin, 
 with higher walls than most cabins, earth floor, and 
 an immense lire-place, where crackled and roared, 
 day and night, a pine-log fire that filled the place 
 with perfume and warmth. 
 
 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 this place. 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 
 
70 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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! 
 Whenever my man comes to the center, 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. 
 
 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 and sun, and dashed 
 down the rocky roads, with his hat on his nose, his 
 
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD. 71 
 
 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 fare 
 well. 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 expres 
 sion 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 Wilder 
 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 break 
 fast " 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 ad 
 vantage 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 
 
72 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 behavior, who resisted the temptations of hurdy- 
 gurdy houses, bull-fights, and bull and bear en 
 counters, who always wrote home on Sundays, 
 read old letters, 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; surg 
 ing 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 neighbor, 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. 
 
 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 
 
TRINCE, PRINCE, OLD BOY, I VE WON THE CIGARS. 
 
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD. 73 
 
 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. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SNOW! NOTHING BUT SNOW! 
 
 SUCH 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 gladia 
 tors. 
 
 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 neigh 
 bors with entertaining families, nothing but the 
 monotony of camp and cabin life of the most un 
 gracious kind. 
 
 We had a claim down among the boulders, 
 boulders as big as 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 to 
 gether. 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 thoughtful man now.. 
 
 (74) 
 
SNOW! NOTHING BUT SNOW! 75 
 
 He was working on a new problem, and was con 
 cerned. Often at night, by the light of the pine- 
 log fire, 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. 
 
 It was a severe and cruel winter. I remember one 
 Sunday I went down to the claim and found a lot 
 of Californian 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 underbrush 
 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. It was a great fall from his grand life 
 the year before. It remained to be seen if he 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 
 
/6 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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 
 instinctively, 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 cheer 
 ful all day, but still he was silent and thoughtful. 
 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, considering 
 my fervid, passionate nature, my inexperience, and 
 utter ignorance of men and things. But he was 
 worthy. I had never seen a full, splendid, sin 
 cere, strong man like this. I had to have some one 
 something to love ; it was a necessity of my 
 nature. This man answered all, and I was satisfied. 
 Had he called me some morning and said, " Come, 
 
SNOW! NOTHING BUT SNOW! 77 
 
 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 questioned 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 elder 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 
 longershook theirsable plumes, or tossed their heads 
 at all. Theirlimbs 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. 
 
78 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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 
 now. 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 
 the mule made his appearance when the trail was 
 open, and that his face expressed uncommon con- 
 
SNOW! NOTHING BUT SNOW! 79 
 
 cern 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 
 without offending the miners, until their claims 
 should be opened in the spring. This they now 
 had, and at once took advantage of the opportu 
 nity. 
 
 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 
 little stream. The mine was buried with the 
 brook. 
 
 That stream had never seemed satisfied before. 
 It ran, and foamed, and fretted, hurried and hid 
 under the boughs and bushes, held onto the roots 
 and grasses, and lifted little white hands as it ran 
 toward 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 cudgeled 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 
 
80 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 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. Certainly it was satisfied now. 
 
 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 sug 
 gestive. 
 
 Miners are great eaters in the winter. Snuff the 
 fierce frost weather of the Sierras, run in the snow, 
 or delve in the mine through the day, and roast by 
 a great pine fire through the evening, and you will 
 eat like an Englishman. 
 
 The snow had fallen very fast; then the weather 
 settled cold and clear as a bell. The largest and the 
 brightest stars, it seemed to me, hang about and 
 above Mount Shasta in those cold, bright winter 
 nights of the north. They seem as large as Cali 
 fornia lilies; they flash and flare, and sparkle and 
 dart their little spangles; they lessen and enlarge, 
 and seem to make signs, and talk and understand 
 each other, in their beautiful blue home, that seems 
 in the winter time so near the summit of the mount 
 ain blazing on this awful altar eternally to the 
 Eternal. 
 
SNOW! NOTHING BUT SNOW! 8 1 
 
 The Indians say that it is quite possible to step 
 from this mountain to the stars. They say that their 
 fathers have done so often. They lay so many great 
 achievements to their fathers. In this they are very 
 like the white man. But maybe, after all, some of 
 their fathers have gone from this mountain-top to the 
 stars. Who knows? 
 
 We could do nothing but get wood, cook, and eat. 
 It did not take us long to cook and eat. 
 
 The bill of fare was short enough. Miners nearly 
 always lay in a great store of provisions enough to 
 last them through all the winter, as no stores or sup 
 ply posts are kept open when the mines are closed, as 
 they were then. With us that was impossible. All 
 the others up and down the stream, with few excep 
 tions, had complete supplies on hand, and had a good 
 and jovial time generally. 
 
 They got wood, made snow-shoes, cleared off 
 race tracks, and ran races by hundreds on great 
 shoes, twelve and fifteen feet in length, or made 
 coasting places on the hillsides, and slid down hill. 
 
 At night, many would get out the old greasy 
 pack of cards, sit before the fire and play innocent 
 games of old sledge, draw poker, euchre or whist, 
 while some would read by the pine-log light. Others, 
 possessed with a little more devilment or restless- 
 
 6 
 
$2 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 ness, maybe, or idle curiosity, would take the single 
 deep-cut trail that led to The Forks, and bring 
 up down at the crackling fire-place of the Howlin 
 Wilderness. 
 
 One morning we had only bread for breakfast. 
 The Prince was gloomy and silent as we sat down. 
 He did not remain long at the table. He arose 
 and stood by the fire, and watched my relish of 
 the little breakfast with evident satisfaction. 
 
 " Little one," said he, at last, " it is getting 
 mighty rocky. I tell you, the grass is shorter 
 than it ever was with us before, and what to do 
 next I do not know." 
 
 There was something affecting in the voice and 
 manner. My breakfast was nearly choking me, 
 and I tried to hide my face from his. I got up 
 from the table, went to the door anct looked across 
 into the white sheet of snow hung upon the mount 
 ain opposite, got the air, came back, kicked the 
 fire vigorously, and turned and stood by his side 
 with my back to the fire also. 
 
 The weather was still clear and cold. There 
 was, of course, no absolute need of going hungry 
 there, as far as we two were concerned, if we had 
 had the courage, or, rather, the cowardice, to ask 
 for bread. 
 
SNOW! NOTHING BUT SNOW! 83 
 
 But this man was a proud man, and a complete 
 man, I take it; and, when a man of that nature gets 
 cornered, he is going to endure a great deal before 
 he makes any sign. A true man can fight, he can kill, 
 but he cannot ask for quarter. Want only makes 
 such a man more sensitive. Distress only intensi 
 fies his proud and passionate nature, and he prepares 
 himself for everything possible but an appeal to man. 
 Besides, this man was not altogether a miner. He 
 had never felt that he had won his place among the 
 brawny, broad-shouldered men, who from the first, 
 and all through life, had borne and accepted the 
 common curse that fell on man through the first 
 transgression, and he had always held himself some 
 what aloof. 
 
 Perhaps he was fighting a battle with himself. 
 Who knows? It seems to me now, although I had 
 no thought of such a thing then, that he had made 
 a resolve within himself to make his bread by the 
 sweat of his brow, to set a good example to one 
 whom fate had given into his charge, and never turn 
 back or deviate from the one direction. 
 
 What that man must have felt would be painful to 
 consider. As for myself, I did not take in all the 
 situation, or really half of it. This man, somehow, 
 stood to me like a tower. I had no fear. 
 
84 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 The weather was still intensely cold. That after 
 noon the Prince said: 
 
 " Come, we will go to town." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 
 
 BLOOD ON THE SNOW. 
 
 THERE was a tribe of Indians camped down on 
 the rapid, rocky Klamat River a sullen, ugly set 
 were they, too: at least so said The Forks. Never 
 social, hardly seeming to notice the whites, who 
 were now thick about them, below them, above 
 them, on the river all around them. Sometimes 
 we would meet one on the narrow trail; he would 
 gather his skins about him, hide his bow and arrows 
 under their folds, and, without seeming to see any 
 one, would move past us still as a shadow. I do 
 not remember that I ever saw one of these Indians 
 laugh, not even to smile. A hard-featured, half- 
 starved set of savages, of whom the wise men of the 
 camp prophesied no good. 
 
 The snow, unusually deep this winter, had driven 
 them all down from the mountains, and they were 
 compelled to camp on the river. 
 
 The game, too, had been driven down along with 
 the Indians, but it was of but little use to them. 
 Their bows and arrows did poor competition with 
 
 the rifles of the whites in the killing of the game. 
 
 (85) 
 
86 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 The whites had fairly filled the cabins with deer 
 and elk in their season, got the lion s share, and 
 left the Indians almost destitute. 
 
 Another thing that made it rather more hard on 
 the Indians than anything else, was the utter fail 
 ure of the annual run of salmon the summer before, 
 on account of the muddy water. The Klamat, 
 which had poured from the mountain lakes to the 
 sea as clear as glass, was now made muddy and 
 turbid from the miners washing for gold on its 
 banks and tributaries. The trout turned on their 
 sides and died; the salmon from the sea came in 
 but rarely on account of this; and what few did 
 come were pretty safe from the spears of the 
 Indians, because of the colored water; so that the 
 supply, which was more than all others their bread 
 and their meat, was entirely cut off. 
 
 Mine? It was all a mystery to these Indians as 
 long as they were permitted to live. I have seen 
 them gather in groups on the bank above the mines 
 and watch in silence for hours as if endeavoring to 
 make it out; they would shrug their shoulders, 
 draw their skins closer about them, and stalk away 
 no wiser than before. 
 
 Why we should tear up the earth, toil like 
 gnomes from sun-up to sun-down, rain or sun, 
 
BLOOD ON THE SNOW. 8/ 
 
 destroy the forests and pollute the rivers, was to 
 them more than a mystery it was a terror. I 
 believe they accepted it as a curse, the work of 
 evil spirits, and so bowed to it in sublime silence. 
 
 This loss of salmon was a greater loss than you 
 would suppose. These fish in the springtime 
 pour up these streams from the sea in incalculable 
 schools. They fairly darken the water. On the 
 head of the Sacramento, before that once beautiful 
 river was changed from a silver sheet to a dirty 
 yellow stream, I have seen between the Devil s 
 Castle and Mount Shasta the stream so filled with 
 salmon that it was impossible to force a horse 
 across the current. Of course, this was not usual, 
 and now can only be met with hard up at the heads 
 of mountain streams where mining is not carried 
 on, and where the advance of the fish is checked by 
 falls on the head of the stream. The amount of 
 salmon which the Indians would spear and dry in 
 the sun, and hoard away for winter, under such 
 circumstances, can be imagined. 
 
 What made matters worse, there was a set of 
 men, low men, of the lowest type, who would hang 
 around those lodges at night, give the Indians whisky 
 of the vilest sort, debauch their women, and cheat 
 the men out of their skins and bows and arrows. 
 
88 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 Perhaps there was a grim sort of philosophy in 
 the red man so disposing of his bows and arrows 
 now that the game was gone and they were of no 
 further use. Sold them for bread for his starving 
 babes, maybe. How many tragedies are hidden 
 here? How many tales of devotion, self-denial, 
 and sacrifice, as true as the white man ever lived, 
 as pure, and brave, and beautiful as ever gave 
 tongue to eloquence or pen to song, sleep here 
 with the dust of these sad and silent people on the 
 bank of the stormy river! 
 
 In this condition of things, about mid-winter, 
 when the snow was deep and crusted stiff, and all 
 nature seemed dead and buried in a ruffled shroud, 
 there was a murder. The Indians had broken out! 
 The prophesied massacre had begun! 
 
 Killed by the Indians! It swept like a telegram 
 through the camp. Confused and incoherent, it is 
 true, but it gathered force and form as the tale flew 
 on from tongue to tongue, until it assumed a fright 
 ful shape. 
 
 A man had been killed by the Indians down at 
 the rancheria. Not much of a man, it is true. 
 
 Killed, too, down in the Indian camp when he 
 should have been in bed, or at home, or at least in 
 company with his kind. 
 
BLOOD ON THE SNOW. 89 
 
 All this made the miners hesitate a bit as they 
 hurriedly gathered in at The Forks, with their long 
 Kentucky rifles, their pistols capped and primed, 
 and bowie-knives in their belts. 
 
 But as the gathering storm that was to sweep the 
 Indians from the earth took shape and form, these 
 honest men stood out in little knots, leaning on 
 their rifles in the streets, and gravely questioned 
 whether, all things considered, the death of the 
 " Chicken," for that was the dead man s name, was 
 sufficient cause for interference. 
 
 To their eternal credit these men mainly decided 
 that it was not, and two by two they turned away, 
 went back to their cabins, hung their rifles up on 
 the rack, and turned their thoughts to their own 
 affairs. 
 
 But the hangers-on about the town were terribly 
 enraged. " A man has been killed! " they pro 
 claimed aloud. " A man has been murdered by the 
 savages!! We shall all be massacred! butchered! 
 burnt!!" 
 
 In one of the saloons where men were wont to 
 meet at night, have stag-dances, and drink light 
 ening, a short, important man, with the print of a 
 glass-tumbler cut above his eye, arose and made a 
 speech. 
 
QO MY OWN STORY. 
 
 " Fellow-miners [he had never touched a pick in 
 his life], I am ready to die for me counthry! [He 
 was an Irishman sent out to Sydney at the Crown s 
 expense.] What have I to live for? [Nothing 
 whatever, as far as any one could tell.] Fellow- 
 miners, a man has been kilt by the treacherous 
 savages kilt in cold blood! Fellow-miners, let us 
 advance upon the inemy. Let us let us fellow- 
 miners, let us take a drink and advance upon the 
 inemy. " 
 
 " Range around me. Rally to the bar and take 
 a drink, every man of you, at me own ixpense." 
 
 The barkeeper, who was also proprietor of the 
 place, a man not much above the type of the 
 speaker, ventured a mild remonstrance at this whole 
 sale generosity; but the pistol, flourished in a very 
 suggestive way, settled the matter, and, with some 
 thing of a groan, he set his decanters to the crowd, 
 and became a bankrupt. 
 
 This was the beginning; they passed from saloon 
 to saloon, or, rather, from door to door; the short, 
 stout Irishman making speeches, and the mob 
 gathering force and arms as it went, and then, wild 
 with drink and excitement, moved down upon the 
 Indians, some miles away on the bank of the river. 
 
 " Come," said the Prince to me, as they passed 
 
BLOOD ON THE SNOW. 9 1 
 
 out of town, " let us see this through. Here will be 
 blood. We will see from the hill overlooking the 
 camp. I hope the Indians are armed hope to 
 God they are heeled, and that they will receive 
 the wretches warmly as they deserve." 
 
 Maybe his own wretchedness had something to 
 do with his wrath; but I think not. I should rather 
 say that, had he been in strength and spirits, and 
 had his pistols, which had long since been disposed 
 of for bread, he had met this mob face to face, and 
 sent it back to town. 
 
 We followed not far behind the crowd of fifty or 
 sixty men armed with pistols, rifles, knives, and 
 hatchets. 
 
 The trail led to a little point overlooking the bar 
 on which the Indian huts were huddled. 
 
 The river made a bend about there. It ground 
 and boiled in a crescent blocked with running 
 ice and snow. The Indians were out in the ex 
 treme curve of a horse-shoe made by the river, and 
 we advanced from without. They were in a net. 
 They had only a choice of deaths ; death by drown 
 ing, or death at the hands of their hereditary foe. 
 
 It was nearly night ; cold and sharp the wind 
 blew up the river, and the snow flew around like 
 feathers. Not an Indian to be seen. The thin 
 
92 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 blue smoke came slowly up, as if afraid to leave 
 the wigwams, and the traditional, ever-watchful 
 and wakeful Indian dog was not to be seen or 
 heard. The men hurried down upon the camp, 
 spreading out upon the horse-shoe as they ac- 
 vanced in a run. 
 
 " Stop here, " said the Prince ; and we stood from 
 the wind behind a boulder that stood, tall as a 
 cabin, upon the bar. The crowd advanced to 
 within half a pistol shot, and gave a shout as they 
 drew and leveled their arms. Old squaws came 
 out bang! bang! bang! shot after shot, and they 
 were pierced and fell, or turned to run. 
 
 The whites, yelling, howling, screaming, were 
 now among the lodges, shooting down at arm s 
 length man, woman, or child. Some attempted 
 the river, I should say, for I afterward saw streams 
 of blood upon the ice, but not one escaped; nor 
 was a hand raised in defense. It was all done in 
 a little time. Instantly, as the shots and shouts 
 began, we two advanced, we rushed into the camp, 
 and, when we reached the spot, only now and then 
 a shot was heard within a lodge, dispatching a 
 wounded man or woman. 
 
 The few surviving children for nearly all had 
 been starved to death had taken refuge under 
 
BLOOD ON THE SNOW. 93 
 
 skins and under lodges overthrown, hidden away 
 as little kittens will hide just old enough to spit and 
 hiss, and hide when they first see the face of man. 
 These were now dragged forth and shot. Not all 
 these men who made this mob, bad as they were, 
 did this only a few ; but enough to leave, as far 
 as they could, no living thing. 
 
 The babies did not scream. Not a wail, not a 
 sound. The murdered men and women, in the 
 few minutes that the breath took leave, did not 
 even groan. 
 
 As we came up a man named " Shon " at 
 least, that was all the name I knew for him held 
 up a baby by the leg, a naked, bony little thing, 
 which he had dragged from under a lodge held 
 it up with one hand, and with the other blew its 
 head to pieces with his pistol. 
 
 I must stop here to say that this man Shon soon 
 left camp, and was afterward hung by the Vigilance 
 Committee near Lewiston, Idaho Territory; that 
 he whined for his life like a puppy, and he died like 
 a coward as he was. I chronicle this fact with a 
 feeling of delight. 
 
 He was a tall, spare man, with small, gray eyes, 
 a weak, wicked mouth, colorless and treacherous, 
 that was forever smiling and smirking in your face. 
 
94 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 Shun a man like that. A man who always smiles 
 is a treacherous-natured coward. 
 
 He knows, himself, how villainous and contempt 
 ible he is, and he feels that you know it too, and so 
 tries to smile his way into your favor. Turn away 
 from that man who smiles and smiles, and rubs his 
 hands as if he felt, and all men knew, that they 
 were really dirty. 
 
 You can put more souls of such men as that 
 inside of a single grain of sand than there are dimes 
 in the national debt. 
 
 This man threw down the body of the child 
 among the dead, and rushed across to where a pair 
 of ruffians had dragged up another, a little girl, 
 naked, bony, thin as a shadow, starved into a ghost. 
 He caught her by the hair with a howl of delight, 
 placed the pistol to her head, and turned around to 
 point the muzzle out of range of his companions 
 who stood around on the other side. 
 
 The child did not cry she did not even flinch. 
 Perhaps she did not know what it meant ; but I 
 should rather believe she had seen so much of death 
 there, so much misery, the steady, silent work of 
 the monster famine through the village day after 
 day that she did not care. I saw her face ; it did 
 
BLOOD ON THE SNOW. 95 
 
 not even wince. Her lips were thin and fixed, and 
 firm as iron. 
 
 The villain, having turned her around, now lifted 
 his arm, cocked the pistol, and 
 
 " Stop that! Stop that, or die ! You damned 
 assassin, let go that child, or I will pitch you neck 
 and crop into the Klamat." 
 
 The Prince had him by the throat with one hand, 
 and with the other he wrested the pistol from his 
 grasp and threw it into the river. The Prince had 
 not even so much as a knife. The man did not 
 know this, nor did the Prince care, or he had not 
 thrown away the weapon he wrung from his hand. 
 The Prince pushed the child behind him, and 
 advanced toward the short, fat Sydney convict, who 
 >had turned, pistol in hand, in his direction. 
 
 " Keep your distance, or I will send you to hell 
 across lots in a second." 
 
 The man turned away cowed and baffled. He 
 had looked in the Prince s face, and seen his 
 master. 
 
 As for myself, I was not only helpless, but, as 
 was always the case on similar occasions, stupid, 
 awkward, speechless. I went up to the little girl, 
 however, got a robe out of one of the lodges for 
 they had not yet set fire to the village and put 
 
96 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 it around her naked little body. After that, as I 
 moved about among the dead, or stepped aside to 
 the river to see the streams of blood on the snow 
 and ice, she followed close as a shadow behind me, 
 but said nothing. 
 
 Suddenly there was a sharp yell, a volley of oaths, 
 exclamations, a scuffle, and blows. 
 
 "Scalp him! Scalp him! the little savage! Scalp 
 him and throw him in the river! " 
 
 From out of the piles of dead somewhere, no one 
 could tell exactly where or when, an apparition had 
 sprung up a naked little Indian boy, that might 
 have been all the way from twelve to twenty, armed 
 with a knotted war-club, and had fallen upon his foes 
 like a fury. 
 
 The poor little hero, starved into a shadow, stood 
 little show there, though he had been a very Her 
 cules in courage. He was felled almost instantly 
 by kicks and blows; and the very number of his 
 enemies saved his life, for they could neither shoot 
 nor stab him with safety, as they crowded and 
 crushed around him. 
 
 How or why he was finally spared, was always a 
 marvel. Quite likely the example of the Prince 
 had moved some of the men to more humanity. 
 
 When the crowd that had formed a knot about 
 
BLOOD ON THE SNOW. 97 
 
 him had broken up, and I first got sight of him, he 
 was sitting on a stone with his hands between his 
 naked legs, and blood dripping from his long hair, 
 which fell down in strings over his forehead. He 
 had been stunned by a grazing shot, no doubt, 
 and had fallen among the first. He came up to his 
 work, though, like a man, when his senses re 
 turned, and, without counting the chances, lifted 
 his two hands to do with all his might the thing he 
 had been taught. 
 
 Valor, such valor as that, is not a cheap or 
 common thing. It is rare enough to be respected 
 even by the worst of men. It is only the coward 
 who affects to despise such courage. 
 
 This boy sat there on the stone as the village 
 burned, the smoke from burning skins, the wild-rye 
 straw, willow-baskets and Indian robes, ascended, 
 and a smell of burning bodies went up to the Indians 
 God and the God of us all, and no one said nay, and 
 no one approached him; the men looked at him 
 from under their slouched hats as they moved around, 
 but said nothing. 
 
 I pitied him. God knows I pitied him. I was 
 a boy myself, alone, helpless, in an army of strong 
 and unsympathetic men. I would have gone up 
 and put my arms about the wild and splendid little 
 
 7 
 
98 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 savage, bloody and desperate as he was, so lonely 
 now, so intimate with death, so pitiful! if I had 
 dared, dared the reproach of men-brutes. 
 
 There was a sort of nobility about him; his 
 recklessness, his desire to die, lifting his little arms 
 against an army of strong and reckless men, his 
 proud and defiant courage, that made me feel at 
 once that he was above me, stronger, somehow 
 better, than I. Still, he was a boy, and I was a boy 
 the only boys in the camp, and my heart went 
 out, strong and true, toward him. 
 
 The work of destruction was now too complete. 
 There was not found another living thing nothing 
 but two or three Indians that had been shot and 
 shot, and yet seemed determined never to die, that 
 lay in the bloody snow down toward the rim of the 
 river. 
 
 Naked nearly, they were, and only skeletons, 
 with the longest and blackest hair tangled and 
 tossed, and blown in strips and strings, or in clouds 
 out on the white and the blood-red snow, or down 
 their tawny backs, or over their bony breasts, 
 about their dusky forms, fierce and tinconquered, 
 with the bloodless lips set close, and blue, and 
 cold, and firm, like steel. 
 
 The dead lay around us, piled up in places, limbs 
 
BLOOD ON THE SNOW. 99 
 
 twisted with limbs in the wrestle with death; a 
 mother embracing her boy here; an arm thrown 
 around a neck there; as if these wild people could 
 love as well as die. 
 
 In the village, some of the white men claimed to 
 have found something that had been stolen. I 
 have no idea there is any truth in it. I wish there 
 was; then there might be some shadow of excuse 
 for all the murders that made up this cruel tragedy, 
 all of which is, I believe, literally true; truer than 
 nine-tenths of the history and official reports writ 
 ten, wherein these people are mentioned ; and I 
 stand ready to give names, dates, and detail to all 
 whom it may concern. 
 
 Let me not here be misunderstood. An Indian 
 is no better than a white man. If he sins let him 
 suffer. But I do protest against this custom of 
 making up a case this custom of deciding the 
 case against him in favor of the white man, forever, 
 on the evidence of the white man only; even 
 though that custom be, in the language of the law, 
 so old " that the memory of man runneth not to 
 the contrary." 
 
 The white man and red man are much alike, with 
 one great difference, which you must and will set 
 down to the advantage of the latter. 
 
100 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 The Indian has no desire for fortune ; he has no 
 wish in his wild state to accumulate wealth ; and it 
 is in his wild state that he must be judged, for it is 
 in this condition that he is said to sin. If " money 
 is the root of all evil," as Solomon hath it, then 
 the Indian has not that evil, or that root of evil, or 
 any desire for it. 
 
 It is the white man s monopoly. If an Indian 
 loves you, trusts you, or believes in you at all, he 
 will serve you, guide you through the country, fol 
 low you to battle, fight for you, he and all his sons 
 and kindred, and never think of the pay or profit. 
 He would despise it if offered, beyond some pres 
 ents, some tokens of remembrance, decorations, or 
 simplest articles of use. 
 
 Again, I do vehemently protest against taking 
 the testimony of border Indians or any Indians 
 with whom the white man comes in constant con 
 tact, and to whom he has taught the use of money 
 and the art of lying. 
 
 And most particularly I do protest against taking 
 these Indians renegades who affiliate, mix and 
 strike hands with the whites, as representative 
 Indians. Better take our own " camp followers " 
 as respectable and representative soldiers. 
 
 When you reflect that for centuries the Indians 
 
BLOOD ON THE SNOW. IOI 
 
 in almost every lodge on the continent, at almost 
 every council, have talked of the whites and their 
 aggressions, and of these things chiefly, and always 
 with that bitterness which characterizes people who 
 look at and see only one side of the case, then you 
 may come to understand, a little, their eternal 
 hatred of their hereditary enemy how deeply 
 seated this is, how it has become a part of their 
 nature, and, above all, how low, fallen, and how 
 unlike a true Indian one must be who leaves his 
 retreating tribe and lingers in a drunken and 
 debauched fellowship with the whites, losing all 
 his virtues, and taking on all the vices of his 
 enemy. 
 
 The true Indian retires before the white man s 
 face to the forest and to the mountain tops. It is 
 very true he leaves a surf, a sort of kelp and drift 
 wood, and trash, the scum, the idlers, and the 
 cowards and prostitutes of his tribe, as the sea leaves 
 weeds and drift and kelp. But the true Indian is to 
 be found only in his fastnesses or on the heights, 
 gun in hand. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 
 
 THE boy had not moved. I believe he had not 
 lifted his eyes. The sharp wind, pitching up and 
 down and across, cut him no doubt, on the one 
 hand, while the burning wigwams scorched him on 
 the other; but he did not move. 
 
 The Prince had stood there all this time like a 
 king, turning sometimes to watch this man or that, 
 but never going aside, never giving way an inch 
 for any one. They went around him, they avoided 
 him, or deferred to him in every way possible. 
 From the very moment he came down from the 
 bluff to the bank of the river, and they saw him 
 in their midst, they felt the presence of a master 
 and a man. 
 
 I had always said to myself, "This man is of royal 
 blood. This man was born to lead and control." 
 To me he had always stood, like Saul, a head and 
 shoulders above his fellows. 1 had always believed 
 him a king of men, and now I knew it. 
 
 He took the little girl by the hand, folded her 
 
 robe about her gently as if she had been a Chris- 
 
 (102) 
 
THE PRINCE SMILED. STOOPED, AND PICKED UP His CLUB, AND Pur IT IN His HAND. 
 
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. IO3 
 
 tian born, looked to her moccasins, and then cast 
 about to see who should take and provide for the 
 boy. The last man was going gone! 
 
 There was a look of pain and trouble in the face 
 of the Prince. There was not a crust of bread in 
 the cabin; a poor place to which to take the two 
 starved children, to be sure. 
 
 The cast of care blew on with the wind; then 
 with the same old look of confidence and self-pos 
 session he went up to the Indian boy, took him 
 by the thin little arm, and bade him arise and 
 follow. 
 
 The boy started. He did not understand, and 
 then he understood perfectly. He stood up taller 
 than before. His face looked fierce and bitter, 
 and his hands lifted as if he would strike. The 
 Prince smiled, stooped and picked up his club, and 
 put it in his hand. This conquered him. He 
 stood it against the stone on which he had sat, took 
 up a robe that lay under his feet, fastened his moc 
 casin strings, and we moved away together and in 
 silence. 
 
 The little girl would look up now and then, and 
 endeavor to be pleasant and do cunning things; 
 but this boy with his club tucked under his robe 
 did not look up, nor down, nor around him. 
 
104 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 There were some dead that lay in the way; he 
 did not notice them. He walked across them as if 
 they had been clay. What could he have been 
 thinking of ? 
 
 I know very well what I do; how unpopular and 
 unprofitable it is to speak a word for this weak and 
 unfriended people. Fate seems to have the matter 
 in hand, for in the last decade they have lost more 
 ground than in the fifty preceding years. Cannon 
 are mounted on their strongholds, even on the 
 summits of the Rocky Mountains. Bayonets 
 bristle in their forests of the north, and sabers flash 
 along the plains of the Apache. There is no one 
 to speak for them now, not one. If there was I 
 should be silent. 
 
 Game and fish have their seasons to come and go, 
 as regular as the flowers. Now the game go to the 
 hills, now to the valleys, to winter, now to the 
 mountains, to bring forth their young. You break 
 in upon their habits by pushing settlements here 
 and there. With the fish you do the same by build 
 ing dams and driving steamboats, and you break 
 the whole machinery and stop their increase. Then 
 the Indians must starve, or push over onto the 
 hunting and fishing grounds of another tribe. This 
 makes war. The result is they fight fight like 
 
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 1 05 
 
 dogs! almost like Christians! Here is the whole 
 trouble in a nut-shell. 
 
 Let us, sometimes, look down into this thing 
 honestly, try and find the truth, and understand. 
 
 Even the ocean has a bottom. 
 
 We reached the cabin, and built a roaring fire. 
 
 " Stand your club there in the corner, Klamat," 
 said the Prince to the boy, " and come to the fire. 
 This is your home now." The boy understood the 
 signs and the softened speech, and did as he was 
 bid, not as a slave, but proud and unbending as a 
 chief in council. 
 
 The little girl had washed her hands and face, 
 thrown back her long, luxuriant hair, and stood 
 drying herself by the fire, quite at home. 
 
 Two more mouths to feed, and where was the 
 bread to come from? 
 
 Soon the Prince went out and left us there. He 
 returned in a little while with a loaf of bread. 
 
 Where did he get it? I never knew. 
 
 He divided it with a knife carefully into three 
 pieces, gave first to the Indian boy, then to the 
 Indian girl, and then to me. Then he stood there 
 a moment, looked a little embarrassed, but finally 
 said something about wood and went out. 
 
106 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 We ate our bread as the ax smote and echoed 
 against the pine-log outside. 
 
 A certain strong magnet attracts, from out the 
 grains of gold, all the ironstone and black sand to 
 itself. It seemed there was something in the nature 
 of this man that attracted all the helpless, and 
 weak, and worthless to his side. He had not 
 sought these little savages. That would have been 
 folly, if not an absolute wrong to them. There 
 was, perhaps, not another man in camp as little 
 capable of caring for them as he. 
 
 To see those Indians eat daintily, only a little 
 bit at a time, then put it under the robe, stealthily, 
 and look about them; then a memory, and the head 
 would bend and the eyes go down; then the little 
 piece of bread would be withdrawn, eyed wistfully, 
 a morsel broken off, and then the piece again 
 returned beneath the robe, to be again withdrawn, 
 as they found it impossible to resist the hunger that 
 consumed them. 
 
 But Indians are strangely preservative, and these 
 had just endured a bitter school. They had learned 
 the importance of hoarding a bit for to-morrow, and 
 even the next morning had quite a piece of bread 
 still. How could they suppose that any one would 
 
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. IO/ 
 
 provide, or attempt to provide, for them the next 
 day? 
 
 The Prince came in at last from the dusk, and we 
 all went out and helped to bring the wood from the 
 snow. 
 
 I am bound to say that I suddenly grew vastly in 
 * my own estimation that evening. Up to this time I 
 had been the youngest person in all the camp, the 
 most helpless, the least of all. Here was a change. 
 Here were persons more helpless than myself; some 
 one now that I could advise, direct, dictate to, and 
 patronize. 
 
 There must be a point in each man s life when 
 he becomes a man turns from the ways of a boy. 
 
 I daresay any man can date his manhood from 
 some event, from some little circumstance that 
 seemed to invest him with a sort of majesty, and 
 dignify him, in his own estimation, at least, with 
 manhood. A man must first be his own disciple. 
 If he does not first believe himself a man, he may 
 be very sure the world will not believe it. 
 
 We sat late by the fire that night. The little 
 girl leaned against the wall by the fireside and 
 slept, but the boy seemed only to brighten and 
 awake as the night went on. He looked into the 
 fire. What did he see? What were his thoughts? 
 
108 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 What faces were there? Fire, and smoke, and 
 blood the dead! 
 
 Down before the fire in their fur robes we laid 
 the little Indians to sleep, and sought our blankets 
 in the bunks against the wall. 
 
 Through the night one arose, and then the other, 
 and stirred the fire silently and lay down. Indians 
 never let their fires go out in their lodges in time of 
 peace. It is thought a bad omen, and then it is 
 inconvenient, and certainly not the thing to do in 
 the winter. 
 
 The Prince was up early the next morning. He 
 could not sleep. Why? Starve yourself a week, 
 and you will understand. I did not think or 
 ask myself then why he could not sleep. I know 
 now. 
 
 He went to town at daybreak. Then, when we 
 had rolled a back-log into the spacious fire-place, 
 and built a fire under my direction, a new style of 
 architecture to the Indians, with a fore-stick on the 
 stone and irons, and a heap of kindling-wood in the 
 center, I induced Klamat to wash his face, and 
 helped him to wash the blood from his hair in a 
 pan of tepid water. 
 
 The little girl, without any direction, made her 
 toilet, poor child, in a simple, natural way, with a 
 
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. IOQ 
 
 careful -regard for the effect of falls of dark hair on 
 her brown shoulders and about her face; and then 
 we all sat down and looked at the fire, and at each 
 other in silence. 
 
 Soon the Prince returned, and, wonderful to tell, 
 he had on his shoulder a sack of. flour. 
 
 His face was beaming with delight. He took 
 the sack from his shoulder gently, set it on the 
 empty flour-bench in the corner, as carefully and 
 tenderly as if it had been a babe as if it had been 
 his own firstborn. 
 
 The " Doctor "came with him. Not on a pro 
 fessional visit, however, but as a friend, and to see 
 the Indians. 
 
 Now, this Doctor was a character, a special part 
 of The Forks. Not a lovely part or an excellent 
 part, in the estimation of eithersaloon-men or miners, 
 but he filled a place there that had been left blank had 
 he gone away, and that was not altogether because 
 he was the only doctor in the place, but because 
 he was a man of marked individuality. 
 
 A man who did not care three straws for the 
 good or ill will of man, and, as a consequence, as 
 is always the fortune of such men when they first 
 appear in a place, was not popular. 
 
 He was a small man, a sort of an invalid, and a 
 
IIO MY OWN STORY. 
 
 man who had no associates whatever. He was 
 always alone, and never spoke to you if he could 
 help it. 
 
 How the Prince made this man s acquaintance I 
 do not know. Most likely he had gone to him 
 that morning deliberately, told him the situation 
 of things, asked fcr help, and had it for the asking. 
 For my part, I had rather have seen almost any 
 one else enter the cabin. I did not like him from 
 the first time that I ever saw him. 
 
 " Come here, Paquita," said the Doctor, as he 
 sat down on the three-legged stool by the fire, and 
 held out his hand to the Indian girh She drew 
 her robe modestly about her bosom, and went up 
 to the man, timid but pleasantly. 
 
 I knew no more of this Doctor, or his name, 
 than of the other men around me. 
 
 He had come into the camp as a doctor, had pill- 
 bags and a book or two, and was called the Doctor. 
 
 Had another doctor come, he would have been 
 called Doctor Brown, or Smith, or Jones, provided 
 that neither of these names, or the name given him 
 by the camp, was the name given him by his 
 parents. I know a doctor who wore the first 
 beaver hat into a camp and was called Doctor Tile. 
 He could not get rid of that name. If he had died 
 
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. Ill 
 
 in the camp, Doctor Tile would have been the name 
 written on the pine board at his head. 
 
 " I will bake some bread, Doctor, for my ba 
 bies ; " and the Prince threw off his coat and rolled 
 up his sleeves, and went to work. He opened the 
 mouth of his burden on the bunk, thrust in his 
 hand, drew out the yellow flour in the gold-pan, 
 sprinkled in some salt, poured in cold water from 
 the bucket, and soon had a luscious cake baking 
 before the fire in the frying-pan. 
 
 Little Klamat meantime had retreated to his 
 club, and stood with his back to the corner, with 
 his head down, but at the same time watching the 
 Doctor from under his hair, as a cat watches a 
 mouse ; only he was not the cat in this case, by a 
 great deal. 
 
 The Doctor talked but little, and then only in an 
 enigmatical sort of a way, with the Prince. He did 
 not notice me, and that contributed to my instinct 
 ive dislike. Soon he took leave, and we four ate 
 bread together. 
 
 A wind came up the Klamat from the sea that 
 night, soft and warm enough to drip the icicles 
 from the cabin eaves, and make the drooping trees 
 along the river bank raise their heads from the 
 snow as if with hope. 
 
112 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 The Doctor came frequently and spent the even 
 ing as the weeks went by. The butchers mules 
 came braying down the trail erelong, and we 
 needed bread and meat no more. 
 
 The thunder boomed away to the west one night 
 as if it had been the trump of resurrection ; a rain 
 set in, and the next morning Humbug Creek, as if 
 it had heard a Gabriel blovtf, had risen and was rush 
 ing toward the Klamat and calling to the sea.- 
 
 Some birds flew out, squirrels left the rocks and 
 kept running up and down the pines, and places 
 where the snow had melted off and left brown burs 
 and quills and little shells. The backbone of the 
 winter storm was broken. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 SUNSHINE. 
 
 THE sunshine follows the rain. There was a sort 
 of general joyousness. The Prince was now a king, 
 it seemed to me. He had fought a battle with fate 
 against him; fought it^ silent, patient, and alone; 
 he had conquered, and was glad. 
 
 The great hero is born of the long, long struggle. 
 Who cannot go down to battle with banners, with 
 trumps and the tramp of horses? Who cannot 
 fight for a day in a line of a thousand strong, with 
 the eyes of the world upon him? But the man who 
 fights a battle coolly, quietly, patiently and alone, 
 with no one to applaud or approve, as the strife 
 goes on through all the weary year, and after all to 
 have no reward but that of his own conscience, the 
 calm delight of a duty well performed, is God s 
 own hero. 
 
 He is knighted and ennobled there, when the 
 fight is won, and he wears thenceforth the spurs of 
 gold and an armor of invulnerable steel. 
 
 We went down again among the boulders in the 
 bed of the creek. The Prince swung his pick, I 
 
 8 (113) 
 
114 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 shoveled the thrown-out earth, and the little Indi 
 ans would come and look on and wonder, and lend 
 a hand in an awkward sort of a way for a few min 
 utes at a time, then go back to the cabin or high 
 up on the hills in the sun, following whatever pur 
 suit they chose. 
 
 The Prince did not take it upon himself to direct 
 or dictate what they should do, but watched their 
 natural inclinations and actions with the keenest 
 interest. 
 
 He loved freedom too well himself to attempt to 
 fetter these little unfortunates with rules and forms 
 that he himself did not hold in too great respect; 
 and, as for taxing them to labor, they were yet 
 weak, and but poorly recovered from the effects of 
 the famine on the Klamat. 
 
 Besides, he had no disposition to reduce them to 
 the Christian slavery that was then being introduced, 
 and still obtains, up about Mount Shasta, wherever 
 any of the Indians survive. 
 
 The girl developed an amiable and gentle nature, 
 but the boy showed anything but that from the first. 
 He always went out of the cabin whenever strangers 
 entered, would often spend days alone, out of sight 
 of everyone, and stubbornly refused to speak a word 
 of English. At the end of weeks he was untamed 
 
SUNSHINE. 115 
 
 as ever, and evidently untamable. The Prince 
 had procured him a cheap suit of clothes, some 
 thing after the fashion of the miner s dress; but he 
 despised it, and would only wear his shirt with the 
 right arm free and naked, the red sleeve tucked in 
 or swinging about his body. He submitted to 
 have his hair trimmed, but refused to wear a hat. 
 
 The first great epoch of his civilized life was the 
 receipt of a knife as a gift from the Prince. It was 
 more to him than diamonds to a bride. He kept 
 it with him everywhere; slept with it always. It 
 was to him as a host of companions. 
 
 Sometimes he talked in the Indian tongue to the 
 girl, but only when he thought no one noticed or 
 heard him. 
 
 The girl was quite the other way. She took to 
 domestic matters eagerly, learned to talk in a few 
 weeks, after a fashion, and was most anxious to be 
 useful. She had a singular talent for drawing. 
 One day she made an excellent charcoal picture of 
 Mount Shasta, on the cabin door, and was delighted 
 when she saw the Prince take pride in her work. 
 She was eager to do everything, and insisted on 
 doing all the cooking. 
 
 She had a great idea of the use of salt, and often 
 an erroneous one. For instance, one morning she 
 
Il6 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 put salt in the coffee as well as in the beef and 
 beans. I think it was an experiment of hers 
 that she was so anxious to please and make things 
 palatable, she put it in to improve the taste. I 
 can very well understand how she thought it all 
 over, and said to herself, " Now, if a little pinch of 
 this white substance adds to the beans, why will 
 it not contribute to the flavor of the coffee? " Once 
 she put sugar on the meat instead of salt, but the 
 same mistake never happened twice. 
 
 I must admit that she was deceitful, somewhat; 
 not willfully, but innocently so. In fact, had any 
 thing of importance been involved, she would have 
 stood up and told the whole simple truth with a 
 perfect indifference to results. She did this once, 
 I know, when she had done an improper thing, in 
 a way that made us trust and respect her. But 
 she did so much like to seem wise about things of 
 which she was wholly ignorant. When she had 
 learned to talk she one day pretended to Klamat 
 to also be able to read and understand what was 
 written on the bills of the butchers. Her ambition 
 seemed to be to appear learned in that she knew 
 the least about. But all that is so much like many 
 people you meet, that I know you are prepared to 
 call her half-civilized, even in these few weeks. 
 
SUNSHINE. 117 
 
 This sort of innocent deceit is no new thing, par 
 ticularly in women. And I rather like it. Go on 
 to one of the fashionable streets to-day in Amer 
 ica, and there you will find that the lady who has 
 the least amount of natural hair has invariably the 
 largest amount of artificial fix-ups on her head. 
 This rule is almost infallible; it has hardly the tra 
 ditional exception to testify to its truth. 
 
 And I am not sure but that nature herself is a 
 little deceitful. The dead and leafless oaks have 
 the richest growth, of ivy, as if to make the world 
 believe that the trees are thriving like the bay. All 
 about the mouths of caves, all openings in the 
 earth, old wells and pits, the rankest growths 
 abound, as if to say, here is no wound in the breast 
 of earth! here is even the richest and the choicest 
 spot upon her surface. 
 
 To go further into a new field. If a true woman 
 loves you truly, she fortifies against it in every pos 
 sible way as a weak place in her nature. She 
 tries to deceive, not only the world, but herself. 
 To keep out the eyes of the inquisitive, she would 
 build a barricade to the moon. She would not be 
 seen to whisper with you for the world. Yet, if she 
 loved you less, she would laugh and talk and whisper 
 
Il8 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 by the hour, and think nothing of it. I like such 
 deceit as that. It is natural. 
 
 The miners were at work like beavers. Up the 
 stream and down the stream the pick and shovel 
 clanged against the rock and gravel from dawn un 
 til darkness came down out of the forests above 
 them and took possession of the place. 
 
 The Prince worked on patiently, industriously 
 with the rest, with reasonable success and first-rate 
 promise of fortune. The pent-up energies of the 
 camp were turned loose, and the stream ran thick 
 and yellow with sediment from pans, rockers, toms, 
 sluices and flumes. 
 
 Spring came sudden and full grown from the 
 south. She blew up in a fleet of sultry clouds from 
 the Mexican seas, along the Californian coast. 
 
 At first she hardly set foot in the canon. The 
 sun came down to us only about noontide, and 
 then only tarried long enough to shoot a few bright 
 shafts through the dusk and dense pine-tops at the 
 banks of snow beneath, and spring did not like the 
 place as well as the open, sunny plains over by the 
 city, and toward the Klamat lakes. But at last she 
 came to take possession. She planted her banners 
 on places the sun made bare, and put up signs and 
 landmarks not to be misunderstood. 
 
SUNSHINE. 119 
 
 The balm and alder burst in leaf, and catkins 
 drooped and dropped from willows in the water, 
 till you had thought a legion of woolly caterpillars 
 were drifting to the sea. Still the place was not to 
 be surrendered without a struggle. It was one of 
 winter s strongholds. He had been driven, day after 
 day, in a march of many a thousand miles. He 
 had retreated from Mexico to within sight of Mount 
 Shasta, and here he turned on his pursuer. One 
 night he came boldly down and laid hands on the 
 muddy little stream, and stretched a border of ice 
 all up and down its edges; spread frost-work, white 
 and beautiful, on pick, and torn, and sluice, and 
 flume and cradle, and made the miners curse him 
 to his beard. He cut down the banners of the 
 spring that night, lamb-tongue, Indian turnip and 
 catella, and took possession as completely as of 
 old. 
 
 But, when the sun came up at last, he let go 
 his hold upon the stream, took off his stamp from 
 pick and pan, and torn, and sluice and cradle, and 
 crept in silence into the shade of trees and up the 
 mountain side against the snow. 
 
 And now the spring came back with a double 
 force and strength. She planted California lilies, 
 fair and bright as stars, tall as little flag-staffs, 
 
120 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 along the mountainside, and up against the winter s 
 barricade of snow, and proclaimed possession abso 
 lute through her messengers, the birds, and we were 
 very glad. 
 
 Paquita gathered blossoms in the sun, threw her 
 long hair back, and bounded like a fawn along the 
 hills. Klamat took his club and knife, drew his 
 robe only the closer about him in the sun, and went 
 out gloomy and somber in the mountains. Some 
 times he would be gone all night. 
 
 At last the baffled winter abandoned even the 
 wall that lay between us and the outer world, and 
 drew off all his forces to Mount Shasta. He 
 retreated above the timber line, but he retreated not 
 an inch beyond. There he sat down with all his 
 strength. He planted his white and snowy tent 
 upon this everlasting fortress, and laughed at the 
 world below him. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " A MAN FOR BREAKFAST." 
 
 " Now, that we have got an alcalde," said a 
 man one day, " why not put him to work? " 
 
 There had been a pretty general feeling against 
 those who took part in the murder of the Indians 
 by the miners, and this man who was always boil 
 ing over on some subject, and was brimful of 
 energy, went and laid the case before the alcalde 
 and instituted a prosecution. Here was a sensation! 
 The court sent a constable to arrest a prisoner with 
 a verbal warrant, and the man came into " court," 
 followed by half the town, gave verbal bonds for 
 his appearance-next Sunday, and the court adjourned 
 to that day. 
 
 Sides were taken at once. The idlers, of course, 
 all taking sides with the prisoner; the miners mostly 
 going the other way. The assassins were active in 
 getting evidence out of the way, making friends 
 with the alcalde, and intimidating all who dared 
 express sympathy with the Indians. 
 
 The Indian boy came home that night, beaming 
 with delight. His black eyes flashed like the eyes 
 
 (MI) 
 
122 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 of a cat in the dark. He had always seemed so 
 passive and sullen, that we had come to believe he 
 had no life or passion in him. 
 
 He talked to Paquita eagerly, and made all 
 kinds of gestures; put his fingers about his neck, 
 stabbed himself with an imaginary knife, threw 
 himself toward the fire, and shot, with an imagi 
 nary gun at an imaginary prisoner. Would he be 
 hung, stabbed, burnt or shot? The boy was so 
 eager and excited that once or twice he broke out 
 into pretty fair English at some length, the first he 
 had ever been heard to utter. 
 
 The Doctor was unpopular. In fact, doctors 
 usually are in the mines. Whether this is 
 because nine-tenths of those who are there are 
 impostors, or whether it is because miners give 
 open expression to a natural dislike that strong men 
 feel for the man to whose ministry we all have to 
 submit ourselves some day, I do not pretend to say. 
 
 Even the Indian boy disliked the Doctor bitterly, 
 and one day flew at him, without any cause, and 
 clutched a handful of hair from his half-bald head. 
 The alcalde, too, disliked the Doctor, and only the 
 evening before the trial some one, passing the 
 cabin, heard the alcalde call the Doctor a fool to 
 his teeth. * 
 
123 
 
 That was a feather in the alcalde s hat, in the 
 eyes of The Forks, but a bad sign for the Doctor. 
 The Doctor should have knocked him down, said 
 The Forks. 
 
 The day of the trial came, and the big prose 
 cutor, in respect for the court and the occasion, but 
 toned up his flannel shirt, hid his hairy bosom, and 
 gave over his gin and peppermint during all the 
 examination. 
 
 The prisoner was named " Spades." Whether 
 it was because he looked so like the black, squatty 
 Jack of Spades I do not know; but I should say 
 he was indebted to his likeness to that right or left 
 bower for his name. 
 
 There was not the slightest doubt that he had 
 deliberately murdered two or three Indian children, 
 butchered them, as they crouched on the ground; 
 but there were grave doubts as to what the alcalde 
 would do in the case, for he had teen pretty 
 plainly told that he must not hold the man to 
 answer. 
 
 A low, wretched man was this the lowest in 
 the camp; but he stood between others of a more 
 respectable character and danger. His fortune in 
 the matter was a prophecy of theirs. The prisoner 
 was nearly drunk as he took his seat. He sat with 
 
124 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 his hat on. In fact, miners, in the matter of wear 
 ing hats, would make first-class Israelites. 
 
 " Ef I ain t out o this by dark," said Spades, as 
 he jerked his head over his shoulder and spirted 
 a stream of amber at the back-log, " I ll sun some 
 body s moccasins, see if I don t." And he looked 
 straight at the alcalde, who settled down uneasily 
 in his seat, and placed his new beaver hat on the 
 table between himself and the prisoner as a sort of 
 barricade. 
 
 Two or three gamblers, good enough men in 
 their way, acted as attorneys for Spades. The big 
 prosecutor proved by his witnesses how Spades 
 had butchered the babes down on the Klamat, in 
 detail. 
 
 The other side did not ask any questions. The 
 attorneys whispered a moment among themselves, 
 and then one of them got up, took the stand, and 
 gravely asserted that on that day, and at the very 
 moment described, he was playing poker with 
 Spades at two bits a corner. Then another arose 
 with the same account ; and then another. It was 
 the clearest alibi possible. 
 
 This was the first attempt to introduce law prac 
 tice at The Forks, and no wonder that it did not 
 work well, and that some things were forgotten. 
 
125 
 
 All were new hands court, counsel, and nearly 
 all present, here witnessed their first trial. 
 
 They all had forgotten to have their witnesses 
 sworn. 
 
 The testimony being all in, the "Court "pro 
 ceeded solemnly to sum up the case. In conclusion, 
 it said, " You will observe that, as a rule, the fur 
 ther we go from the surface of things the nearer we 
 get to the bottom. " This brought cheers and wav- 
 ings of hats, and the Court repeated, " I am free to 
 say that the Court has gone diligently into the 
 depths of this case, and that, as a rule, the further 
 you get from the surface of things the nearer you 
 get to the bottom. The case looked dark indeed 
 against the prisoner at first ; but the Court has 
 gone to the bottom of the matter and he is now 
 white as snow. " 
 
 " Hear ! hear ! hear ! " shouted a man from Syd 
 ney, who always hobbled a little as if he dragged a 
 chain when he walked. 
 
 " Snow is good ! " said a miner between his 
 teeth, as he looked at the black visage of the 
 prisoner. 
 
 " You see," continued the alcalde, " that things 
 are often not so black as they first appear, partic 
 ularly if they are only fairly washed." 
 
126 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 " Particularly if they are white-washed ! " said 
 the big prosecutor, as he turned to the bar, swal 
 lowed his gin and peppermint, and left the saloon 
 in disgust. 
 
 All this time a tawny little figure had stood back 
 in the corner unseen, perhaps, by any one. It was 
 Klamat with his club. He had watched with the 
 eyes of a hawk the whole proceeding. He had 
 drank in every sentence, and had never once taken 
 his eyes from the Court or the prisoner. 
 
 When the alcalde decreed the prisoner free, and 
 the Court adjourned, and all ranged themselves in 
 a long, single file before the bar, calling out " Cock 
 tail," " Tom-and-Jerry," " Brandy-smash," " Gin- 
 sling," " Lightning straight," " Forty-rod," and so 
 on, he slipped out. 
 
 The Doctor quarreled with the alcalde. 
 
 " That little doctor 11 put a bug in his soup for 
 him yet, see f he don t, " said some one that evening 
 at the saloon. 
 
 " All right, let him," said a man, who stood at 
 the bar, in gum-boots and with a gold-pan under 
 his left arm. "All right, let him," said the 
 bearded sovereign, as he threw back his head and 
 opened his mouth. " It s not my circus, nor won t 
 
"A MAN FOR BREAKFAST/ 127 
 
 be my funeral ; " and he wiped his beard and went 
 out saying to himself: 
 
 " Fight dog, and fight bar, 
 Thar s no dog of mine thar." 
 
 The Prince, with that clear common-sense which 
 always came to the surface, had foreseen the whole 
 affair so far as the trial was concerned, and had 
 remained at home hard at work. 
 
 The next morning the butcher shouted down 
 from the cabin, as he weighed out the steaks : " A 
 man for breakfast up in town, I say! a man for 
 breakfast up in town, and I ll bet you can t guess 
 who it is. " 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "The alcalde!" 
 
 The man had been stabbed to death not far 
 from his own door, some time in the night, per 
 haps just before retiring. There were three dis 
 tinct mortal wounds in the breast. There had 
 evidently been a short, hard struggle for life, for 
 in one hand he clutched a lock of somebody s hair. 
 That long, soft, silken, half curling, yellow German 
 hair of the Doctor s, that grew on the sides of his 
 head there was not to be found another lock of 
 hair like this in the mountains. 
 
 The dead man had not been robbed. That was 
 
128 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 a point in the Doctor s favor. He had been met in 
 the front, had not been poisoned, or stabbed or 
 shot in the back ; that was another very strong 
 point in the Doctor s favor. 
 *****#* 
 
 As a rule, a funeral in the mines is a mournful 
 thing. It is the saddest and most pitiful spectacle 
 I have ever seen. The contrast of strength and 
 weakness is brought out here in such a way that 
 you must turn aside or weep when you behold it. 
 To see those strong, rough men, long-haired, 
 bearded and brown, rugged and homely-looking, 
 with something of the grizzly in their great, awk 
 ward movements, now take up one of their number, 
 straightened in the rough pine box, in his miner s 
 dress, and carry him up, up on the hill in silence 
 it is sad beyond expression. 
 
 He has come a long way, he has journeyed by 
 land or sea for a year, he has toiled and endured, 
 and denied himself all things for some dear object 
 at home, and now, after all, he must lie down in the 
 forests of the Sierras, and turn on his side and die. 
 No one to kiss him, no one to bless him, and say 
 " good-bye," only as a woman can, and close the 
 weary eyes, and fold the hands in their final rest: 
 and then, at the grave, how awkward how silent! 
 
" A MAN FOR BREAKFAST." 129 
 
 How they would like to look at each other and say 
 something, yet, how they hold down their heads, or 
 look away to the horizon, lest they should meet 
 each other s eyes. Lest some strong man should 
 see the tears that went silently down from the eyes 
 
 of another over his beard and onto the leaves 
 
 ******* 
 
 The Doctor had appeared out of place in this 
 camp from the first. Every one seemed to feel 
 that perhaps no one felt it more keenly than him 
 self. 
 
 There are people, it seems to me, who go all 
 through life looking for the place where they be 
 long and never finding it. This to me is a very 
 sad sight. They seem to fit in no place on top of 
 the earth. 
 
 I had always hated and feared the man till now. 
 But the feeling against him now aroused a sort of 
 antagonism in my nature, that always has, and I 
 expect always will, come to the surface on such 
 occasions on the side of the despised, perfectly re 
 gardless of propriety, self-interest, or any consider 
 ation whatever. 
 
 If a man has succeeded and is glad, let him go 
 his way. What should I have to do with him? 
 
 And maybe, often, there is a kind of subtle wis- 
 
130 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 dom in this view of men. I think it is born -of the 
 fact that your ostentatious, prosperous man, your 
 showy rich man of America, is so very, very poor, 
 that you do not care to call him your neighbor. 
 It is true he has horses and houses and land and 
 gold, but these horses and houses and lands and 
 coins, are all in the world he has. When he dies 
 these will all remain and the world will lose nothing 
 whatever. His death will not make even a ripple 
 in the tide of life. His family, whom he has taught 
 to worship gold, will forget him in their new estates. 
 In their hearts they will be glad that he has gone. 
 They will barter and haggle with the stone-cutter 
 toiling for his bread, and for astarve-to-death price 
 they will lift a marble shaft above his head with an 
 iron fence around it typical, cold, and soulless! 
 
 Poor man, since he took nothing away that one 
 could miss, what a beggar he must have been. The 
 poor and unhappy never heard of him: the world 
 has not lost a thought. Not a note missed, not a 
 word was lost in the grand, sweet song of the uni 
 verse when he died. 
 
 It was remarkable how suddenly the Indian chil 
 dren sprung up with the summer. No one could 
 have recognized in this neat, modest, sensitive girl, 
 and this silent, savage-looking boy, who. sometimes 
 
PAQIMTA. 
 
looked almost a man, the two starved, naked little 
 creatures of half a year before. 
 
 There was a little lake belted by wild red roses 
 and salmon berries, and fretted by overhanging ferns 
 under the great firs that shut out the sun save in 
 little spars and bars of light that fell through upon 
 a bench of the hills; a sort of lily pond, only half 
 a pistol-shot across, at the bottom of a waterfall, and 
 clear as sunshine itself. Here Paquita would go 
 often and alone to pass her idle hours. I chanced 
 to see her there on the rim, walking against the sun, 
 and looking into the water as she moved forward, 
 now and then back, across her shoulder, as a maiden 
 in a glass preparing for a ball. She had just been 
 made glad with her first new dress red, and 
 decorated with ribbons, made gay, and of many 
 colors. The poor child was studying herself in the 
 waters. 
 
 This was not vanity; no doubt there was a deal 
 of satisfaction, a sort of quiet pride, in this, but it 
 was something higher, also. A desire to study 
 grace, to criticise her movements in this strange, 
 and to her, lovely dress, and learn to move with the 
 most perfect propriety. She practiced this often. 
 The finger lifted sometimes, the head bowed, then 
 the hands in rest, and the head thrown back, she 
 
132 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 would walk back and forth for hours, contemplating 
 herself, and catching the most graceful motion from 
 the water. 
 
 What a rich, full, and generous mouth was hers 
 frank as the noonday. Beware of people with 
 small mouths, they are not generous. A full, rich 
 mouth, impulsive and passionate, is the kind of 
 mouth to trust, to believe in, to ask a favor of, and 
 to give kind words to. 
 
 There are as many kinds of mouths as there are 
 crimes in the catalogue of sins. There is the mouth 
 for hash ! thick-lipped, coarse, and expressionless, 
 a picket of teeth behind. Bah! Then there is the 
 thin-lipped, sour-apple mouth, sandwiched in be 
 tween a sharp chin and thin nose. Look out! 
 
 There are mischievous mouths, ruddy and full of 
 fun, that you would like to be on good terms with 
 if you had time; and then there is the rich, full 
 mouth, with dimples dallying and playing about it 
 like ripples in a shade, half sad, half glad a mouth 
 to love. Such was Paquita s. A rose, but not yet 
 opened; only a bud that in another summer would 
 unfold itself wide to the sun. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 BONE AND SINEW. 
 
 How we wrought! the Prince and I, patiently 
 and industriously. So did thousands above us and 
 below us; there was a clang of picks and shovels, 
 the smiting of steel on the granite, a sound through 
 the sable forests, an echoing up the far hill-sides 
 like the march of an army to battle, clashing the 
 sword and buckler. 
 
 Every man that wrought there, worked for an 
 object. There was a payment to be met at home; 
 a mortgage to be lifted. The ambition of one I 
 knew was to buy a little home for his parents; an 
 other had orphan sisters to provide for; this had an 
 invalid mother. This had a bride, and that one the 
 promise of a bride. Every miner there had a his 
 tory, a plan, a purpose. 
 
 Every miner there who bent above the boulders, 
 and toiled on silently under the dark-plumed pines 
 and theshadowsof the steep and stupendous mount 
 ains, was a giant in body and soul. 
 
 Never since the days of Cortez, has there been 
 gathered together such a hardy and brave body of 
 
134 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 men as these first men of the Pacific. When it took 
 six months voyaging round the Horn, and immi 
 nent perils, with like dangers and delays, to cross 
 the isthmus or the continent, then the weak of heart 
 did not attempt it, and the weak of body died on 
 the way. The result was a race of men worthy of 
 the land. 
 
 There was another segregation and sifting out 
 after the Pacific was reached. There lay the mines 
 open to all who would work; no capital but a pick 
 and pan required. The most manly and independ 
 ent life on earth. At night you had your pay in 
 your hand, your reward weighed out in virgin gold. 
 If you made five, ten, fifty, or a thousand dollars 
 that day, you made it from the fall of no man; no 
 decline of stocks or turn in trade which carried 
 some man to the bottom, brought you to the top; 
 no speculation, no office, no favor, only your own 
 two hands and your strong, true heart, without 
 favor from any man. You had contributed that 
 much to the commerce of the world. If there is 
 any good in gold, you had done that much good to 
 
 the world, besides the good to yourself. 
 
 ******* 
 
 The Doctor in the meantime ranged around the 
 hill-sides, wrote some, gathered some plants, and 
 
BONE AND SINEW. 135 
 
 seemed altogether the most listless, wretched, mis 
 erable man you could conceive. He made his home 
 in our cabin now, and rarely went to town ; for 
 when he did so, some one of the hangers-on about 
 the saloons was sure to insult him. Sometimes, 
 however, he would be obliged to go, such as when 
 some accident or severe illness would compel the 
 miners to send for him, and he never refused to 
 attend. On one of these occasions, Spades, half 
 drunk and wholly vicious, caught the Doctor by the 
 throat as he met him in the trail near town, and 
 shook him. 
 
 Spades boasted he had made his old teeth rattle 
 like rocks in a rocker. The Doctor said nothing, 
 but got off as best he could and came home. He 
 did not even mention the matter to any one. 
 
 Shortly after this Spades was found dead. He 
 was found just as the alcalde had been found, close 
 to his cabin door, with mortal stabs in the breast. 
 
 There was talk of a mob. This thing of killing 
 people in the night, even though they were the 
 most worthless men of the camp, and even though 
 they were killed in a way that suggested something 
 like fair play, and revenge rather than robbery, was 
 not to be indulged in with impunity. Some of the 
 idlers got together to pass resolutions, and take 
 
136 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 some steps in the matter, as Spades lay stretched 
 out under an old blue soldier-coat on a pine slab 
 that had many dark stains across and along its 
 rugged surface, but they fell into an exciting game 
 of poker, at ten dollars a corner, and the matter 
 for the time was left to rest. No Antony came to 
 hold up the dead Caesar s mantle, and poor Spades 
 was buried much as they had buried the alcalde a 
 short time before. 
 
 Some one consulted the Giant on the subject, 
 about the time of the funeral, as he stood at the 
 bar of the Howlin Wilderness for his gin and pep 
 permint. The Giant was something of a mouth 
 piece for the miners, not that he was a recognized 
 leader ; miners, as a rule, decline to be led, but 
 rather that he knew what they thougrft on most 
 subjects, and preferred to act with them and ex 
 press their thoughts, rather than incline to the 
 idlers about The Forks. He drank his gin in 
 silence, set down his glass, and said in an oracular 
 sort of way, as if to himself, when passing out of 
 the door : 
 
 " Well, let em rip ; it s dog eat dog, anyhow !" 
 
 But it was evident that this matter would not 
 
 blow over easily. True, there was no magistrate 
 
BONE AND SINEW. 137 
 
 in camp yet, but there was a live sheriff over in the 
 city and the sheriff wanted work. 
 
 The Doctor went on as usual, avoiding men a 
 little more than before. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A STORM IN THE SIERRAS. 
 
 VIRGIN gold, like truth, lies at the bottom. It 
 is a great task in the placer mines, as a rule, par 
 ticularly in the streams, to get on the bed-rock to 
 open a claim and strike a lead. When this is done 
 the rest is simple enough. You have only to keep 
 your claim open, to see that the drain is not 
 clogged, the tail race kept open, and that the 
 water does not break in and fill up your excavation, 
 by which you have reached the bed-rock. All 
 this the Prince and I had accomplished. The 
 summer was sufficiently cool to be tolerable in toil : 
 the season was unusually healthy, and all was 
 well. 
 
 At night, when the flush of the sun would be 
 blown from the tree tops to the clouds, we two 
 would sit at the cabin door in the gloaming, and 
 look across and up, far up, into the steep and sable 
 skirting forest of firs, and listen to the calls of the 
 cat-bird, or the coyote lifting his voice in a plaintive 
 monologue for his mate on the other side. 
 
 Paquita, who at such times sat not far off, had a 
 
 (138) 
 
A STORM IN THE SIERRAS. 139 
 
 great deal to tell about Mount Shasta. She had 
 been on the side beyond. In fact, her home was 
 there, she said, and she described the whole land 
 in detail. A country sloping off gradually toward 
 the east and south ; densely timbered, save little 
 dimples of green prairies, alive with game, dotted 
 down here and there, buried in the dark and splen 
 did forests on the little trout streams that wound still 
 and crooked through wood and meadow. 
 
 She had been out here on the Klamat on a visit, 
 with her mother and others, the fall and winter 
 before. She said they had come down from the 
 lakes in canoes. She also insisted strongly that her 
 father was a great chief of the Modocs and mountain 
 Shastas. 
 
 Indians are great travelers, far greater than is 
 generally believed, and it was quite reasonable to 
 
 ^ 
 
 take that part of the young lady s story as literally 
 true ; but the part about her father being a great 
 chief was set down as one of her innocent fictions 
 by which she wished to dignify herself, and appear 
 of some importance in the eyes of the Prince. 
 
 Still as there had been quite a sensation in camp 
 about new mines in that direction, it was interesting 
 to talk to one who had been through the country, 
 and could give us some accurate account of it. After 
 
140 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 that, finding the Prince was interested enough to 
 listen, she would take great pleasure in describing 
 the country, character and habits of the Indians, and 
 the kind of game with which the forest abounded. 
 
 She would map out on the ground with a stick 
 the whole country, as you would draw a chart on 
 the black-board. 
 
 The feeling against the Doctor had not yet blown 
 over. It was pretty generally understood that the 
 sheriff or a deputy from across the mountain would 
 soon be over with a warrant for his apprehension. 
 
 Why not escape? There are some popular errors 
 of opinion that are amusing. Men suppose that if 
 a man is in the mountains he is safe, hid away, and 
 secure; that he has only to step aside in the brush 
 and be seen no more. 
 
 As a rule, it is safer to be in the heart of a city. 
 Here was a camp of a few thousand men. Each 
 man knew the face of his neighbor. There was 
 but one way to enter this camp, but one way to go 
 out; that way led to the city. We were in a sac, 
 the further end of a cave, as it were. You could 
 not go this way, or that, through the mountains 
 alone. There were no trails; there was no food. 
 You would get lost; you would starve. 
 
 Here, in that day, at least, if a man did wrong 
 
A STORM IN THE SIERRAS. 141 
 
 he could not hide. The finger of God pointed him 
 out to all. 
 
 Late one September day it grew intensely sul 
 try; there was a haze in the sky and a circle about 
 the sun. There was not a breath. The perspir 
 ation came out and stood on the brow, even as we 
 rested in the shadow of the pines. A singular 
 haze; such a day, it is said, as precedes earth 
 quakes. 
 
 The black crickets ceased to sing; the striped 
 lizards slid quick as ripples across the rocks, and 
 birds went swift as arrows overhead, but uttered 
 no cry. There was not a sound in the air nor on 
 the earth. 
 
 Paquita came rushing down to the claim, pale 
 and excited. She lifted her two hands above her 
 head as she stood on the bank, and called to us 
 to come up from the mine. " Come," she cried, 
 " there will be a storm. The trees will blow and 
 break against each other. There will be a flood, a 
 fjea, a river in the mountains. Come!" She 
 swayed her body to and fro, and the trees began to 
 sway above her on the hills, but not a breath had 
 touched the mines. 
 
 Then it grew almost dark; we fairly had to feel 
 our way up the ladder. 
 
142 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 There was a roar like the sea loud, louder. 
 Nearer now the trees began to bend and turn and 
 interweave and smite and crush and lurch until 
 their tops were like one black and boiling sea. 
 
 Fast, faster, the rain in great warm drops began 
 to strike us in the face, as we hastened up the hill 
 to the shelter of die cabin. At the door we 
 turned to look. The darkness of death was upon 
 us; we could hear the groans and the battling of 
 the trees, the howling of the tempest, but all was 
 darkness, blackness, save when the lightning cleft 
 the heavens. 
 
 A sheet of flame as if the hand of God had 
 thrust out through the dark and smote the mount 
 ain side with a sword of fire. 
 
 And then the thunder shook the earth till it 
 trembled, as if Shasta had been shaken loose and 
 broken from its foundation. No one spoke. The 
 lightning lit the cabin like a bonfire. Klamat stood 
 there in the cabin by his club and gun. There was 
 in his face a grim delight. The Doctor lay on his 
 face in his bunk, hiding his eyes in his two hands. 
 
 No one undressed that night in the camp. 
 
 The next morning the fury of the storm was over. 
 We ventured out and looked down into the stream. 
 It was nearly large enough to float a steamer. The 
 
A STORM IN THE SIERRAS. 143 
 
 claim was filled up as level as when we first took it 
 from the hands of the Creator. Ten feet of water 
 flowed swift and muddy over it toward the Klamat 
 and the sea. 
 
 Logs, boards, shingles, rockers, toms, sluices, 
 flumes, pans, riffles, aprons, went drifting, bobbing, 
 dodging down the angry river like a thousand 
 eager swimmers. 
 
 The storm had stolen everything, and was rush 
 ing with his plunder straight as could be to the sea, 
 as if he feared that dawn should catch him in the 
 camp, and the miners come upon him to reclaim 
 their goods. 
 
 Every miner in the camp was ruined. No man 
 had dreamed of this. Maybe a few had saved up 
 a little fortune, but, as a rule, all their fortunes lay 
 in the folds of the next few months. 
 
 Brave men! they said nothing; they set their 
 teeth, looked things squarely in the face, but did 
 not complain. One man, however, who watched 
 the flood from a point on the other side and saw his 
 flume swept away, swung his old slouched hat, 
 danced a sort of savage hokee-pokee, and sang: 
 
 " O, everything is lovely, 
 And the goose hangs high ! " 
 
 We t\vo had not saved much money. And what 
 
144 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 portion of that had I earned? I could not well 
 claim a great deal, surely. How much would be 
 left when the debts were paid the butcher and 
 the others ? True, the claim was valuable, but it 
 had no value now not so much as a sack of 
 flour. There were too many wanting to get away, 
 and men had not yet learned the worth of a 
 mine. Sometimes in these days new excitements 
 would tap a camp, drain it dry, and not leave a soul 
 to keep the coyotes from taking possession of the 
 cabins. 
 
 " What will you do? "said the Prince to me, as we 
 sat on the bank. " We cannot reach the bed 
 rock again till far into the next year. What will 
 you do? " 
 
 " May I stay with you? " 
 
 The strong man reached me his two hands " As 
 long as I live and you live, my little one, and 
 there is a blanket to my name, we will sleep under 
 it together. But we will leave this camp. I 
 have hated it from the first. I have grown old here 
 in a year. I cannot breathe in this narrow 
 canon, with its great walls against the clouds. We 
 will go." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A HOUSE TO LET. 
 
 THAT night the Prince talked a long time with 
 Paquita about the new country on the other side of 
 Shasta, and, putting her account and my brief 
 knowledge of the country together, he resolved to 
 go there, where gold, according to her story, was 
 to be had almost for the picking up, if the Indians 
 did not interfere. 
 
 The next morning this man rested his elbows on 
 the table, and, with his face buried in his hands, was 
 a long time silent. 
 
 " Pack up," he said, at last, to the little girl. 
 
 In a few moments she stood by his side, with 
 a red calico dress and some ribbons tied up in a 
 handkerchief in one hand, and a pair of moccasins 
 in the other. 
 
 The Doctor was anxious to get away more 
 anxious, perhaps, than any one. For what had the 
 camp been to him? If I could have had my way 
 or say, I would have left this mysterious, sad-faced, 
 silent man behind. 
 
 I think the Prince would have done the same. 
 
146 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 We cannot always have our own way, even with 
 ourselves. 
 
 Why does the man not do thus and so, we say? 
 What is there to hinder him? Who shall say yea 
 or nay? Is he not his own master? No. No man 
 is his own master who has a conscience. 
 
 If this man had been of stronger will, had he 
 not been so utterly helpless and friendless, we 
 could have left him, and would have left him gladly; 
 as it was, it was not a matter of choice at all. 
 
 Ponies were scarce, and mules were high priced 
 and hard to get, but the Doctor was not so poor as 
 we, and he put his money all in the Prince s hands. 
 So we had a tolerable outfit. 
 
 A very little pony would answer for me, the com 
 monest kind could bear Paquita and her extra dress, 
 while Klamat could walk and make his own way 
 through the woods, like a grayhound. 
 
 The Prince procured a great double-barreled 
 shot-gun, throwing buckshot by the handful, for 
 himself, and pistols for all, for we were going into 
 the heart of a hostile country. 
 
 An officer, it was rumored, was on the watch for 
 the Doctor, and Klamat prepared to lead us byway 
 of a blind trail, up the mountain side, without pass 
 ing out by way of The Forks. 
 
A HOUSE TO LET. 147 
 
 One of the most interesting studies, as well as 
 one of the rarest, is that of man in a state of nature. 
 Next to that is the state of man removed from, or 
 above the reach of, all human law, utterly away 
 from what is still more potent to control the actions 
 of men, public opinion the good or ill will of the 
 world. 
 
 As far as my observation has gone, I am bound 
 to say that any expression on the subject would 
 be highly laudatory of the native goodness of man. 
 I should say, as a rule, he, in that state, is brave, 
 generous, and just. 
 
 But in civilization I find that the truly just and 
 good man is rarely prominent, he is hardly heard 
 of, while some little, sharp-faced commercial med 
 dler, who never spends or bestows a farthing with 
 out first balancing it on his finger, and reckon 
 ing how much it will bring him by way of honor in 
 return, is often counted the noblest man among us. 
 
 With his moccasins bound tight about his feet, 
 and reaching up so as to embrace the legs of his 
 buckskin pantaloons, his right arm freed from the 
 hateful red-shirt sleeve which hung in freedom at 
 his side, some eagle feathers in his hair, and his 
 rifle on his shoulder, Klamat, with a beaming coun 
 tenance, led the way from the cabin. 
 
148 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 The Prince had assigned him the post of honor, 
 and he was carried away with delight. He seemed 
 to forget that he was the only one on foot. No 
 doubt he \vould gladly have given up the red shirt 
 and buckskins, all but his rifle, with pleasure, at 
 this supreme moment, had they been required to 
 insure his position as leader. 
 
 Alexander gave away to his friends the last of 
 the spoils after a great battle. " And what have 
 you kept for yourself?" said one. "Hope and 
 glory," he answered. 
 
 Klamat was an infant Alexander. 
 
 I followed, then Paquita, the Doctor next. The 
 Prince" took up a piece of charcoal from the heap 
 of charcoal outside the cabin, and wrote, in great, 
 bold letters on the door: 
 
 "To LET." 
 
 We crossed the stream at a cabin below, just as 
 the miners were beginning to stir. 
 
 They seemed to know that something unusual was 
 taking place. They straightened themselves in the 
 fresh light and air, washed their hands and hairy 
 faces in the gold-pans on the low pine stump by the 
 door, but tried, or seemed to try, not to observe. 
 
 Once across the stream, Klamat led steeply up 
 the hill for a time, then he would chop and cut to 
 
A HOUSE TO LET. 149 
 
 the right and left in a zigzag route until we had 
 reached the rim of a bench in the mountain. Here 
 he stopped and motioned the Prince to approach, 
 after he had looked back intently into the camp 
 and taken sight by some pines that stood before 
 him. 
 
 The Prince rode up to the boy and dismounted; 
 when he had done so, the little fellow lifted three 
 fingers, looked excited, and pointed down upon 
 the old cabin. It was more than a mile away, 
 nearly a mile below; but the sun was pitching 
 directly down upon it, and all things stood out 
 clear and large as life. 
 
 Three men rode quickly up to the cabin, leaned 
 from their mules and read the inscription. The 
 leader now dismounted, kicked open the door and 
 entered. It does not take long to search a cabin, 
 without a loft, or even a bed, and the man did not 
 remain a great while within. 
 
 Without even taking pains to close the door, to 
 keep out coyotes and other things, as miners do, 
 so that cabins may be habitable for some wayfarer, 
 or fortune-hunters who may not have a house of 
 their own, he hastily mounted and led the party 
 down to the next cabin below. 
 
 The miners were evidently at breakfast, for the 
 
ISO MY OWN STORY. 
 
 man leaned from his saddle and shouted two or 
 three times before any one came out. 
 
 The door opened, and a very tall, black-bearded, 
 hairy man came forth, and walked up before the 
 man leaning from his mule. 
 
 What was said I do not know, but the bare 
 headed, hairy man pointed with his long arm up 
 the mountain on the other side, exactly the opposite 
 course from the one we had been taken. 
 
 Here the officer said something very loud, pushed 
 back his broad-brimmed hat, and pointed down the 
 stream. The long-armed, bare-headed, hairy man 
 again pointed emphatically up the mountain on the 
 other side, and then wheeled on his heel, entered, 
 and closed the door. 
 
 The interview had evidently not been a satis 
 factory one, or a friendly one to the officer, and he 
 led his men slowly down the creek with their heads 
 bent down intently to the trail. They did not go 
 far. There were no fresh tracks in the way. The 
 recent great rain had made the ground soft, and 
 there was no mistaking the absence of the signs. 
 
 There was a consultation: three heads in broad 
 hats close together as they could get sitting on their 
 mules. Now a hat would be pushed back, and a 
 face lifted up exactly in our direction. We had 
 
A HOUSE TO LET. I5l 
 
 sheltered behind the pines. Klamat was holding 
 the Prince s mule s nose to keep it from braying to 
 those below. Paquita had dismounted a little way 
 off, behind a clump of pines, and.was plucking some 
 leaves and grasses for her pony and the pack-mule 
 to keep them still. The Doctor never seemed more 
 stupid and helpless than now, but, at a sign from 
 Klamat, stole out to the shelter where Paquita 
 stood, dismounted, and began to gather grasses, 
 too, for his mule. 
 
 A poor, crooked, imitative little monkey he 
 looked as he bent to pluck the grass; at the same 
 time watching Paquita, as if he wished to forget 
 that there was any graver task on hand than to 
 pluck grass and feed the little mules. 
 
 Mules are noisy of a morning when they first set 
 out. The utmost care was necessary now to insure 
 silence. 
 
 Had the wind blown in our direction, or even a 
 mule brayed below, these mules in the midst of our 
 party would have turned their heads down hill, 
 pointed their opera-glasses sharply for a moment or 
 two at the sounds below, and then, in spite of kicks 
 or clubs, have brayed like trumpets, and betrayed 
 us where we stood. 
 
 There was no excitement in the face of the Prince, 
 
152 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 not much concern. His foot played and patted in 
 the great wooden stirrup, and shook and jingled 
 the bells of steel on his Spanish spur, but he said 
 nothing. 
 
 Sometimes the men below would point in this 
 direction, and then in that, with their long yellow 
 gauntlets; then they would prick and spur their 
 mules till they spun round like tops. 
 
 When a man pricks and spurs his mule, you may 
 be sure that he is bothered. 
 
 A Yankee would scratch his head, pull at his ear, 
 or rub his chin; an Englishman would take snuff; a 
 Missourian would take a chew of tobacco, and 
 perhaps swear; but a California!! in the mountains 
 disdains to do anything so stupid and inexpressive. 
 He kicks and cuffs and spurs his mule. 
 
 At length the leader set his spurs in the broad 
 hair-sinch, with the long steel points of the rowels, 
 and rode down to the water s edge. A twig was 
 broken there. The Doctor had done that as we 
 crossed, to get a switch for his mule, and brought 
 down the wrath of Klamat, expressed, however, 
 only in frightful grimaces, signs, and the flashing of 
 his eyes. The officer dismounted, leaned over, 
 brushed the burs aside, took some of them up, and 
 examined them closely. 
 
A HOUSE TO LET. 153 
 
 An arm was now lifted and waved authoritatively 
 to the two men sitting on their mules in the trail, 
 and they instantly struck the spurs in the broad 
 sinch, and through into the tough skins of their 
 mules, I think, for they ambled down toward the 
 officer at a rapid pace and consternation! One 
 of them threw up his head and brayed as if for life. 
 
 The Prince s mule pointed his opera-glasses, set 
 out his legs, took in a long breath, and was just 
 about to make the forest ring, when his master 
 sprung to the ground, caught him by the nose, and 
 wrenched him around till he fell upon his haunches. 
 
 Here Klamat made a sign, threw the Doctor on 
 his mule, left Paquita to take care of herself, and 
 led off up the hill. We mounted, and followed as 
 fast as possible; but the Prince s mule, as if in re 
 venge, now stopped short, set out his legs, lifted 
 his nose, and brayed till the very pine-quills quiv 
 ered overhead. 
 
 After he had brayed to his satisfaction, he gave 
 a sort of grunt, as if to say, " We are even now," 
 and shot ahead. The little pack-mule was no 
 trouble. He had but a light load, and, as if in 
 gratitude, faithfully kept his place. 
 
 A pony or horse must be led. Anything but a 
 mule will roam and run against trees, will lodge 
 
154 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 his pack in the boughs that hang low overhead, or, 
 worse still, stop to eat of the branches or weeds, 
 and grasses under foot. The patient, cunning little 
 Mexican mule will do nothing of the sort. He 
 would starve rather than stop to eat when on duty; 
 and would as soon think of throwing himself down 
 over one of the cliffs that he is familiar with as to 
 injure or imperil the pack that has been trusted to 
 his care, by butting against trees, or lodging under 
 the boughs that hang above the trail. He stops the 
 instant the pack is loose, or anything falls to the 
 ground, and refuses to move till all is made right. 
 
 We could not keep pace with Klamat, hasten as 
 we might, through the pines. Like a spirit, he 
 darted here and there through the trees, urging and 
 beckoning all the time for us to follow faster. 
 
 We could not see our pursuers now, yet we knew 
 too well that they were climbing, fast as their strong- 
 limbed sturdy mules would serve them, the hill that 
 we had climbed an hour before. The advantage, 
 on one hand, was theirs; on the other, we had things 
 somewhat our own way. The chances were about 
 evenly balanced for escape without blood. 
 
 Anyone who frequents the mountains of the North 
 will soon notice that on all the hillsides facing the 
 sun there is no undergrowth. You may ride there, 
 
A HOUSE TO LET. 1 55 
 
 provided you do not wedge in between the trees that 
 grow too close together to let^you pass, or go under 
 a hanging bough, the same as in a park. But if you 
 get on the north side of the hill, you find an under 
 growth that is almost impassable for man or beast. 
 Chaparral, manzanita, madrona, plum, whitethorn, 
 and many other kinds of shrubs and trees, contribute 
 to make a perfectly safe retreat from men for the wild 
 beasts of those regions. In a flight, this is the chief 
 thing to do. Keep your eye on the lay of the hills, 
 so that you may always be on the south side, or you 
 will find yourself in a net. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 " TURN TO THE RIGHT AS THE LAW DIRECTS." 
 
 ANOTHER danger lies in getting too low down on 
 the hillside to the sea. On that side, where only 
 grass has grown and pine-quills fallen without any 
 undergrowth to hold them there, and contribute its 
 own decaying and cast-off clothes to the soil, the 
 ground is often broken, and, unlike the north side 
 of the hills, shows here and there steep bluffs and 
 impassable basaltic blocks, or slides of slate or shale 
 on which it would be madness to venture. 
 
 The only safe thing to do is to find the summit, and 
 keep along the backbone of the mountain, and thus 
 escape the chaparral nets of the north and precipices 
 of the south. 
 
 Great skill consists in being able to reach the 
 summit successfully, and still greater in keeping 
 along the backbone when it is once reached, and not 
 follow off on one of the spurs that often shoot up 
 higher than the back of the main ridge. There are 
 many trails here, made by game going to and fro 
 
 in the warm summer days, or in crossing the ridges 
 
 (156) 
 
TURN TO THE RIGHT. 1 57 
 
 in their semi-annual migrations down to the rivers 
 and back again to the mountains. 
 
 The temptations to take one of tfyese trails and 
 abandon the proper one, which is often dim and 
 sometimes wholly indistinct, are many. It takes 
 the shrewdest mountaineer to keep even so much 
 as for one day s journey along the backbone without 
 once being led aside down the spurs into the nets of 
 chaparral, or above the impassable crags and preci 
 pices. Of course, when you can retrace your steps 
 it is a matter of no great moment; you will only 
 lose your time. But with us there was no going 
 back. 
 
 When we had reached the second bench we 
 turned to look. Soon the heads of the men were 
 seen to shoot above the rim of the bench below; 
 perhaps less than a mile away. No doubt they 
 caught sight of us now, for the hand of the officer 
 lifted, pointed in this direction, and he settled his 
 spurs in his sinch, and led his men in pursuit. 
 
 Deliberately the Prince dismounted, set his sad 
 dle well forward, and drew the sinch tight as possi 
 ble. 
 
 We all did the same; mounted then, and followed 
 the boy, who had by this time set both arms 
 free from the odious red shirt which was now belted 
 
158 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 about his waist, up the hill as fast as we could fol 
 low. 
 
 We reached the summit of the ridge. Scintilla 
 tions from the flashing snows of Mount Shasta 
 shimmered through the trees, and a breath of air 
 came across from the Klamat lakes and the Modoc 
 lands beyond, as if to welcome us from the dark, 
 deep canon with its leaden fringe, and lining of 
 dark and eternal green. 
 
 The Doctor pushed his hat back from his brow 
 and faintly smiled. He was about to kiss his hand 
 to the splendid and majestic mountain showing in 
 bars and sections through the trees, but looked 
 around, caught the eye of Klamat, and his hand 
 fell timidly to his side. 
 
 As for Paquita, she leaped from her pony and 
 put out her arms toward her childhood home. 
 Her face was radiant with delight. Beautiful with 
 divine beauty, she arched her hand above her brow, 
 looked long and earnestly at the mountain, and 
 then, in a wild and unaccountable sort of 
 ecstacy, turned suddenly, threw her arms about her 
 pony s neck, embraced him passionately and kissed 
 his tawny nose. 
 
 We had been buried in that canon for so long, 
 we were like men who had issued from a tomb. ,As 
 
WE COULD NOT KEEP PACE WITH KLAMAT, HASTEN AS Ws MIGHT. 
 
"TURN TO THE RIGHT." 159 
 
 for myself, I was much as usual; I clasped and 
 twisted my hands together as I let my reins fall on 
 my horse s neck, and said nothing. 
 
 Our animals were mute now, too; no mule of the 
 party could have been induced to bray. They were 
 tired, dripping with sweat, and held their brown 
 noses low and close to the ground, without attempt 
 ing to touch the weeds or grasses. 
 
 Suddenly Klamat threw up his hand. The men 
 had appeared on the bench below. But we had 
 evidently gained on them considerably, for here we 
 had ten minutes rest before they broke over the 
 mountain bench beneath. This was encouraging. 
 No doubt a saddle had slipped off back over a 
 mule s rump in some steep place, and thus caused 
 the delay, for they had neglected to sinch their sad 
 dles in their great haste. 
 
 They dismounted now, and settled their saddles 
 again. We tightened our saddles also. 
 
 When the officer threw his leg over the macheers 
 of his saddle below, Klamat set forward. His skill 
 was as wonderful as his endurance. Being now on 
 the summit, he could travel without halting to 
 breathe; this, of course, would be required if he 
 hoped to keep ahead. And, even then, where 
 would it all end? It is most likely no one had 
 
/6O MY OWN STORY. 
 
 thought of that. For my part, I kept watching the 
 sun and wishing for night. 
 
 There is an instinctive desire of all things rational 
 or irrational, I think, that are compelled to fly, to 
 wish for night. 
 
 "O that night or Blucher would come." 
 
 It was hardly possible to keep ahead of our pur 
 suers all day, well mounted as they were, and one 
 of our party on foot, yet that seemed to be the only 
 hope. There yet was an alternative, if the worst 
 came to the worst. We could ambush and shoot 
 
 * 
 
 them down. I saw that Klamat kept an eye con 
 stantly on his rifle when not foxing the trail and 
 eying the pursuers. 
 
 The Prince was well armed. He carried his 
 double-barreled piece before him in the saddle 
 bow. The rest of us were not defenseless. The 
 deed was more than possible. 
 
 These men wanted the Doctor: him only, so far as 
 we knew. The Doctor was accused of murder. 
 The officer, no doubt, had due process and the 
 legal authority to take him. To the Prince he was 
 nothing much. He was no equal in physical or 
 mental capacity. He was failing in health and in 
 strength, and could surely be of no future possible 
 
"TURN TO THE RIGHT." l6l 
 
 use to us. Why should the Prince take life, or 
 even imperil ours, for his sake? 
 
 The answer, no doubt, would be very unsatis 
 factory to the civilized world, but it was enough for 
 the Prince. The man needed his help. The man 
 was almost helpless. This, perhaps, was the first 
 and strongest reason for his course. 
 
 But at the bottom of all other reasons for taking 
 care of this man, who seemed to become every day 
 less capable of taking care of himself, was a little 
 poetical fact not forgotten. This man furnished 
 bread when we were hungry when the snow was 
 deep, when the earth lay in a lock-jaw, as it were, 
 and could not open her mouth to us. 
 
 Now and then Klamat would turn his eyes over 
 his shoulder, toss his head, and urge on. The 
 eagle-feathers in his black hair, as if glad to get 
 back again in the winds of Shasta, floated and flew 
 back at us, and we followed as if we followed a 
 banner. A black banner this we followed, made 
 of the feathers of a fierce and bloody bird. Where 
 would it lead us ? No buccaneers of the sea were 
 freer, wilder, braver at heart than we. Where 
 would it lead us ? 
 
 One thing was fearfully against us. The recent 
 rains had made the ground soft and spongy. The 
 
1 62 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 four horses made a trail that could be followed on 
 the run. Even where the pine-quills lay thickest, 
 the ground would be broken here and there so as 
 to leave little doubt or difficulty to our pursuers. 
 
 Had it been a dry autumn the ground would have 
 been hard as an adobe, and we might have dodged 
 to one side almost anywhere, and, providing our 
 mules did not smell and hail the passing party, 
 escaped with impunity. As it was, nothing seemed 
 left but to persist in flight to the uttermost. And 
 this we did. 
 
 We did not taste food. We had not tasted 
 w r ater since sunrise, and it was now far in the after 
 noon. The Doctor began to sit with an unsteady 
 motion in his saddle. The mules were beginning 
 to bray ; this time from distress, and not excess of 
 spirits. The Prince s mule had his tongue hanging 
 out between his teeth, and, what was worse, his 
 ears began to flop to and fro as if they had wilted 
 in the sun. Some mules put their tongues out 
 through their teeth and go very well for days after; 
 but when a mule lets his ears swing, he has lost 
 his ambition, and is not to be depended on much 
 longer. 
 
 A good mountain mule should not tire short of a 
 week, but there is human nature wherever there is 
 
" TURN TO THE RIGHT." 163 
 
 a bargain to be made, and there are mule jockeys 
 as well as horse jockeys even in the mountains; and 
 you cannot pick up good mules when you like, 
 either for love or money. The men who followed 
 had, no doubt, a tried and trusty stock. Things 
 began to look critical. 
 
 The only thing that seemed unaffected was 
 Klamat. Our banner of eagle feathers still floated 
 defiantly, and promised to lead even further than 
 we could follow. Closer and closer came the pur 
 suers. We could see them striking their steel spurs 
 in their sinches as if they would lift their tired mules 
 along with their heels. 
 
 Once they were almost within hail; but a saddle 
 slipped, and they lost at least ten minutes with a 
 fractious mule, that for a time concluded .not to be 
 sinched again till it had taken rest. 
 
 The sugar-pines dropped their rich and delicate 
 nuts as we rode by, from pyramid cones as long as 
 your arm, and little foxy-looking pine squirrels 
 with pink eyes stopped from their work of hoard 
 ing them for winter, to look or chatter at us as we 
 hurried breathless and wearily past. 
 
 Mount Shasta still flashed down upon us through 
 the dark, rich boughs of fir and pine, but did not 
 thrill us now. 
 
1 64 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 When the body is tired, the mind is tired too. 
 You get surfeited with grandeur at such a time. 
 No doubt the presence tames you somewhat, tones 
 down the rugged points in you that would like to 
 find expression; that would find expression in 
 feeble words but for this greatness which shows 
 you how small you are; but you are subdued rather 
 than elevated. 
 
 Suddenly Klamat led off to the right as if for 
 saking the main summit for a spur. This seemed 
 a bad sign. The Prince said nothing. At any 
 other time, I daresay, he would have protested. 
 
 We had no time to dispute now; besides, almost 
 any change from this toilsome and eternal run was 
 a relief. What made things seem worse, however, 
 this boy seemed to be leading us back again to The 
 Forks. We were edging around at right angles 
 with our pursuers. They could cut across if we 
 kept on, and head us off. We were making more 
 than a crescent; the boy was leading us right back 
 to the men we wished to escape. 
 
 Soon he went out on a point and stopped. He 
 beckoned us to ride up. We did so. It seemed 
 less than half a mile to a point we had passed an 
 hour since, and, as far as we could see, there was 
 only a slight depression between. The officer and 
 
"TURN TO THE RIGHT." 165 
 
 his party soon came in sight. As they did so, he 
 raised his arm. We were not unobserved. 
 
 Klamat sat down to rest, and made signs that we 
 should dismount. I looked at the Prince to see 
 what he would do. He swung himself to the 
 ground, looking tired and impatient, and we all did 
 the same. The Doctor could not keep his feet, 
 but lay down, helpless, on the brown bed of quills 
 from the sugar-pines that clustered around and 
 crowned the point where we had stopped to rest. 
 
 The officer and his men looked to their catenas; 
 each drew a pistol, revolved the cylinder, settled 
 the powder back in the tubes by striking the ivory 
 handles gently on the saddle pommels, saw that 
 each nipple still held its cap, and then spurred his 
 mule down the hillside as if to cross the depression 
 that lay between, and head us off at once. 
 
 They were almost within hail, and I thought I 
 could hear the clean, sharp click of the steel bells 
 on their Spanish spurs as they descended and dis 
 appeared among the tree-tops as if going down in 
 to a sea. 
 
 Klamat had learned some comic things in camp, 
 even though he had not learned, or pretended he 
 had not learned, to talk. When the men had dis 
 appeared among the branches of the trees, he 
 
1 66 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 turned to the Prince and gravely lifted his thumb 
 to his nose, elevated his fingers in the air, and 
 wriggled them in the direction of the place where 
 the officer was seen to descend. 
 
 Every moment I expected to see the muzzles of 
 those pistols thrust up through the pines. They 
 did not appear, however, and, as we arose to adjust 
 our saddles after some time, I stepped to the rim 
 of the hill and looked over to the north side. The 
 hill was steep and rugged, with a ledge, and lined 
 with chaparral. A white-taled rabbit came 
 through, sat down, and looked back into the canon. 
 Some quails started and flew to one side, but that 
 was all I saw or heard. 
 
 The Doctor had now to be assisted to his saddle. 
 He was pale, and his lips were parched and swollen. 
 Slowly now Klamat walked ahead ; he, too, was 
 tired. We had rested too long, perhaps. You 
 cannot get an Indian to sit down when on a long 
 and severe journey, unless compelled to, to rest 
 others. The cold and damp creeps into the joints, 
 and you get stiff and tenfold more tired than be 
 fore. Great as the temptation is to rest, you should 
 first finish your whole day s journey before you let 
 your nerves relax. 
 
 Slowly as we moved, however, our pursuers did 
 
"TURN TO THE RIGHT." 167 
 
 not reappear. We were still on the ridge, in spite 
 of the sharp and eccentric turn it had taken around 
 the head of the river. 
 
 As the sun went down, broad, blood-red banners 
 ran up to the top of Shasta, and streamed away 
 to the south in hues of gold ; streamed and 
 streamed as if to embrace the universe in one great 
 union beneath one banner. Then the night came 
 down as suddenly on the world as the swoop of an 
 eagle. 
 
 The Doctor, who had all the afternoon kept an 
 uncertain seat, now leaned over on his mule s 
 mane, and had fallen, but for the Prince who was 
 riding at his side. 
 
 Klamat came back and set his rifle against a pine. 
 We laid the feeble man on the bed of quills, 
 loosened the sinches as the mules and ponies let 
 their noses droop almost to the ground, and pre 
 pared to spend the night. 
 
 A severe ride in the mountains at any time is a 
 task. Your neck is wrenched, and your limbs are 
 weary as you leap this log or tumble and stumble 
 your tired animal over this pile of rocks or through 
 that sink of mud, until you are tired enough by 
 night ; but when you ride an awkward and un 
 trained mule, when you have not sat a horse for a 
 
1 68 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 year, and have an old saddle that fits you like an 
 umbrella or a barrel, you get tired, stiff-limbed, and 
 used up in a way that is indescribable. As for 
 poor Paquita, she was literally crucified, but went 
 about picking up quills for beds for all, and never 
 once murmured. 
 
 The Doctor was very ill. Klamat went down the 
 hillside and found some water to wet his lips, but 
 this did not revive him. It was a cold evening. 
 The wind came pitching down from Shasta, sharp 
 and sudden. 
 
 We spread a bed for the suffering man, but still 
 he shivered and shook, and we could not get him 
 warm. We, too, were suffering from the cold. 
 We could hardly move when we had rested a 
 moment and let the wind drive the chill to the 
 marrow. 
 
 " A fire," said the Prince. 
 
 Klamat protested against it. The sick man grew 
 wcfrse. Something warm would restore him. 
 
 We must have a fire. Paquita gathered up some 
 pine knots from the hillside. A match was struck 
 in the quills. The mules started, lifted their noses, 
 but hardly moved as the fire sprung up like a giant 
 full-grown, and reached for the cones of the sugar- 
 pines overhead. There was comfort and compan- 
 
" TURN TO THE RIGHT." 169 
 
 ionship in the fire. We could see each other now, 
 our little colony of pilgrims. We looked at one 
 another and were revived. 
 
 We had a little coffee-pot, black and battered it is 
 true, but the water boiled just the same, and as 
 soon as if it had been silver. 
 
 This revived the Doctor. Hunger had much to 
 do with his faintness. He now sat up and talked, 
 in his low, quiet way, looking into the fire and 
 brushing the little mites of dust and pine quills 
 from his shirt, as if still to retain his great respecta 
 bility of dress; and by the time we had all finished 
 our coffee, he was almost as cheerful as we had 
 ever seen him before. 
 
 The moon came out clear and cold, and we 
 spread our blankets on the quills between the pines, 
 with the snowy front of Shasta lifting lifting 
 like a bank of clouds away to the left, and the 
 heads of many mining streams dipping away in so 
 many wild and dubious directions, that no one but 
 our little leader, perhaps, could have found the way 
 through without the gravest embarrassment. 
 
 " Lie down, Paquita," said the Prince; " lie down 
 and rest with your moccasins to the fire; you have 
 had a hard and bitter day of it. I will keep the 
 fire." 
 
I7O MY OWN STORY. 
 
 The child obeyed. He waved his hand at me to 
 do the same, and I was soon sound asleep. 
 
 The last I saw of the Prince before falling asleep, 
 he was resting on his side with his hand on his 
 head, and elbow on his blankets. In the mountains, 
 when you spread your blankets, you put your arms 
 rifle or pistols in between the blankets as care 
 fully as if they were children. This is done, in the 
 first place, to keep them dry, and, in the second 
 place, to have them ready for use. They are laid 
 close to your side. The heat of your body keeps 
 out the damp. 
 
 I awoke soon. I was too bruised, and sore, and 
 sick in mind and body, to sleep. There is a dole 
 ful, dreary bird that calls in this country in the 
 night, in the most mournful tone you can imagine. 
 It is a sort of white-headed owl; not large, but 
 with a very hoarse and coarse note. One of these 
 birds was calling at intervals down the gorge to the 
 right, and another answered on the other side so 
 faintly I could just hear it. An answer would come 
 just as regularly as this one called, and that would 
 sound even more doleful and dreary still, because 
 so far and indistinct. The moon hung cold and 
 crooked overhead, and fell in flakes through the 
 trees like snow. 
 
"TURN TO THE RIGHT." IJl 
 
 But we were safe now in the strong, dark arms 
 of mother night. Our pursuers were lost in the 
 sea of pines below. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 HOME. 
 
 A PECULIARLY nervous man suffers from a men 
 tal ailment as distinctly as from a wound. He 
 grows weak under the sense of mental distress the 
 same as an ordinary man does from the loss of 
 blood. Remove the cause of apprehension, and 
 he recovers the same as the wounded man recovers. 
 Free the mind, and you stop the flow of blood. 
 He grows strong again. 
 
 We moved on a little way the next day, slowly, 
 to be sure, but fast enough and far enough to be 
 able to pitch our camp in a place of our own 
 choosing, with wood, water and grass, the indis 
 pensable requisites of a mountain camp, all close 
 at hand. 
 
 To the astonishment of all, the Doctor unsaddled 
 his mule, gathered up wood, and was a full half- 
 hand at supper. At night he spread his own 
 blankets, looked to his pistols like an old mount 
 aineer, and seemed to be at last getting in earnest 
 with life. The next day, as we rode through the 
 trees, he whistled at the partridges as they ran in 
 
HOME. 173 
 
 strings across the trails, and chirped at the squirrels 
 overhead. 
 
 How delightful it was to ride through the grass 
 and trees, hear the partridges whistle; pack and 
 unpack the horses, pitch the tent by the water, 
 and make a military camp, and talk of war; imagine 
 battles, shooting from behind the pines, and always, 
 of course, making yourself a hero. Splendid! I 
 was busy as a bee. I cooked, packed, stood 
 guard, killed game, did everything. And so we 
 journeyed on through the splendid forests, under the 
 awful, frowning front of Shasta, and over peaceful 
 little streams that wound silently through the grass, 
 as if afraid, till we came to the headwaters of the 
 Sacramento. 
 
 Sometimes we saw other camps. White tents 
 pitched down by the shining river, among the 
 scattered pines; brown mules and spotted ponies 
 feeding and half buried in the long grass; and 
 the sound of the picks in the bar below us all 
 made a picture in my life to love. 
 
 Once we fell in with an Indian party pretty 
 girls and lively, unsuspicious boys, along with their 
 parents fishing for salmon, and not altogether 
 at war with the whites. They treated us with 
 great kindness. 
 
174 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 At last we branched off entirely to ourselves, cut 
 ting deep into the mountain as the winter approached, 
 looking for a home. The weak condition of the 
 Doctor made it necessary that we bring our 
 journey to a close. We had taken a different route 
 from others, for good and sufficient reasons. The 
 trails and tracks of the hundreds of gold-hunters, 
 who had mostly preceded us some months, lay con 
 siderably west of Mount Shasta, striking the head 
 of the Sacramento River at its very source. They 
 had found only a few placers with float gold, not in 
 sufficient quantities to warrant the location of a 
 camp, and pushed on to the mines farther south. 
 
 We sometimes met a party of ten or more, all 
 well armed and mounted, ready to fight or fly as 
 the case might require. The usual mountain civili 
 ties would be exchanged, brief and brusque enough, 
 and each party would pass on its way, with a fre 
 quent glance thrown back suspiciously at our Indian 
 boy with his rifle, the invalid Doctor leaning on his 
 catenas, the Indian girl with her splendid hair and 
 face as bright as the morning, and the majestic 
 figure of the Prince. An odd-looking party was 
 ours, I confess. 
 
 Paquita knew every dimple, bend, or spur in 
 these mountains now. The Prince intrusted her 
 
HOME. 175 
 
 to select some suitable place to rest. One evening 
 she drew rein and reached out her hand. Klamat 
 stood his .rifle against a pine, and began to unpack 
 the tired little mule, and all dismounted without a 
 word. 
 
 It was early sundown. A balm and a calm was 
 on and in all things. The very atmosphere was still 
 as a shadow and seemed to say, " Rest, rest! " We 
 were on the edge of an opening; a little prairie of 
 a thousand acres, inclining south, with tall, very tall 
 grass, and a little stream straying from where we 
 were to wander through the meadow. A wall of 
 pines stood thick and strong around our little Eden, 
 and, when we had unsaddled our tired animals and 
 taken the apparajo from the little packer, we 
 turned them loose in the little Paradise, without 
 even so much as a lariat or hackamoor to restrain 
 them. 
 
 The sun had just retired from the body of the 
 mountain, but it was evident that all day long he 
 rested here and made glad the earth; for crickets 
 sang in the grass as they sing under the hearthstones 
 in the cabins of the West, and little birds started up 
 from the edge of the valley that were not to be found 
 in the forest. 
 
 An elk came out from the fringe of the wood, 
 
1 76 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 threw liis antlers back on his shoulders, with his 
 brown nose lifted, and blew a blast as he turned to 
 fly that made the horses jerk their heads from the 
 grass, and start and wheel around with fright. A 
 brown deer came out, too, as if to take a walk in 
 the meadow beneath the moon, but snuffed a breath 
 from the intruders and turned away. Bears came 
 out two by two in single file, but did not seem to 
 notice us. 
 
 Some men say that the bear is deprived of the 
 sense of smell in the wild state. A mistake. He 
 relies as much on his nose as the deer; perhaps 
 more, for his little black eyes are so small that they 
 surely are not equal to the great liquid eyes of the 
 buck, which are so set in his head that he may see 
 far and wide at once. But the bear carries his 
 nose close to the ground, and of course can hardly 
 smell an intruder in his domains until he comes 
 upon his track. Then it is curious to observe him. 
 He throws himself on his hind legs, stands up tall 
 as a man, thrusts out his nose, lifts it, snuffs the air, 
 turns all around in his tracks, and looks and smells 
 in every direction for his enemy. If he is a cub, 
 however, or even a cowardly grown bear, he 
 wheels about the moment he comes upon the track, 
 
HOME. 177 
 
 will not cross it under any circumstances, and 
 plunges again into the thicket. 
 
 We had a blazing fire soon, and at last, when we 
 had sat down to the mountain meal, spread on 3 
 canvas mantaro, each man on his saddle or a roll 
 of blankets, with his knife in hand, Klamat looked 
 at our limited supply of provisions, and then pointed 
 to the game in the meadow. 
 
 He pictured sunrise, the hunt, the deer, the 
 crack of his rifle, and how he would come into camp 
 laden with supplies. All this, he gave us to under 
 stand, would take place to-morrow, as he placed a 
 sandwich between his teeth, and threw his eyes 
 across his shoulder at the dark figures stealing 
 through the grass across the other side of our little 
 Eden. 
 
 The morning witnessed the fulfillment. Paquita 
 was more than busy all day in dressing venison, 
 and drying the meat for winter. The place was as 
 full of game as a park. No lonelier or more iso 
 lated place than this on earth. We walked about 
 and viewed our new estates. The mules and 
 ponies rolled in the rich grass, or rested in the sun 
 with drooping heads and half-closed eyes. 
 
 Even the invalid Docto r seemed to revive in a 
 most sudden and marvelous way. He saw that no 
 
178 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 white man s foot had ever trod the grasses of this 
 valley; that there we might rest and rest, and 
 never rise up from fear. He could trust the wall 
 of pine that environed us. It was impassable. He 
 stood before an alder-tree that leaned across the 
 babbling, crooked little stream, and with his sheath- 
 knife cut this word HOME. 
 
 A little way from here Paquita showed us another 
 opening in the forest. This was a wider valley, 
 with warm sulphur and soda springs in a great cres 
 cent all around the upper rim. Here the elk would 
 come to winter, she said; and here we could never 
 want for meat. The earth and atmosphere were 
 kept warm here from the eternal springs; and grass 
 would be fresh and green the winter through. 
 
 So here we built our cabin, reared a fortress 
 against the approaching winter without delay, for 
 every night his sentries were coming down bolder 
 and bolder about the camp. 
 
 This was the famous " Lost Cabin. " It stood on 
 a hillside, a little above the prairie, facing the sun, 
 close to the warm springs, and was not unlike an 
 ordinary miner s cabin, except that the fireplace 
 was in the center of the room instead of being 
 awkwardly placed at one end, where but few can 
 
HOME. 179 
 
 get the benefit of the fire. This departure was not 
 without reason. 
 
 In the first place, the two Indians, constituting 
 nearly half of the voting population of our little 
 colony, insisted on it with a zeal that was certainly 
 commendable ; and, as they insisted on nothing 
 else, it was only justice to listen to them in this. 
 
 " By-and-by my people will come," said Paquita, 
 " and then you will want an Indian fire, a fire that 
 they can sit down by and around without sending 
 somebody back in the cold." 
 
 No Indian had as yet, so far as we knew, dis 
 covered us. Paquita had from the first, around 
 the fire, told her plans ; how that, as soon as she 
 should be well rested from her journey, and a house 
 was built and meat secured for the winter, she 
 would take her pony, strike a trail that lay still 
 deeper in the woods, and follow it up till she came 
 to her father s winter lodges. 
 
 How enthusiastically she pictured the reception. 
 How clearly she pictured it all. .She w r ould ride 
 into the village at sundown, alone; the dogs would 
 bark a great deal at her red dress. Then she would 
 dismount, and go straight up to her father s lodge, 
 and sit down by the door. The Indians would 
 pass by and pretend not to see her, but all the time 
 
ISO MY OWN STORY. 
 
 be looking slyly sideways, half-dead to know who 
 she was. Then, after a while, some one of the 
 women wo.uld come out and bring her some water. 
 Maybe that would be her sister. If it was her 
 sister, she would lift up her left arm, and show her 
 the three little marks on the wrist, and then they 
 would know her. 
 
 One fine morning she set forth on her contem 
 plated journey. I did not like the place so well 
 now. The forest was black, gloomy, ghostly a 
 thing to be dreaded. Before, it was dreamy, deep 
 a marvel, a something to love and delight in. 
 The cabin, that had been a very palace, was now 
 so small and narrow, it seemed I would suffocate 
 in the smoke; The fires did not burn so well as 
 they did before. Nobody could build a fire like 
 Paquita. 
 
 Back from our cabin a little way were some grand 
 old bluffs, topped with pine and cedar, from which 
 the view of valley, forest, and mountain, was all 
 that could be desired. A little way down the 
 waters of the valley came together, and went 
 plunging all afoam down the canon, almost impass 
 able, even for footmen. Here we found fine veins 
 of quartz, and first-rate indications of gold, both in 
 the rock and in the placer. The Prince and the 
 
HOME. l8l 
 
 Doctor revived their theories on the origin of gold, 
 and had many plans for putting their speculations 
 to the test. 
 
 Klamat was never idle, yet he was never social. 
 There was a bitterness, a sort of savage deviltry, in 
 all he did. A fierce, positive nature was his, and 
 hardly bridled. 
 
 Whether that disposition dated further back than 
 a certain winter, when the dead were heaped up, 
 and the wigwams burned, on the banks of the 
 Klamat, or whether it was born there of the blood 
 and bodies in the snow, and came to life only when 
 a little, naked skeleton savage sprung up in the 
 midst of men with a club, I do not pretend to say, 
 but I should guess the latter. I can picture him a 
 little boy, with bow and arrows, not over gentle it 
 is true, but, still, a patient little savage, like the rest, 
 talking and taking part in the sports, like those 
 around him. Now, he was prematurely old. He 
 never laughed; never so much as smiled; took no 
 delight in anything, and yet refused to complain. 
 He did his part, but kept his secrets and his sorrows 
 to himself, whatever they may have been. 
 
 Klamat had never alluded to the massacre in any 
 way whatever. Once, when it was mentioned, he 
 turned his head and pretended not to hear. Yet, 
 
1 82 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 somehow it seemed to me that that scene was before 
 him every moment. He saw it in the fire at night, 
 in the forest by day. There are natures that can 
 not forget if they would. A scene like that settles 
 down in the mind; it takes up its abode there and 
 refuses to go away. 
 
 Indians in the aggregate forget less than any other 
 people. They remember the least kindness per 
 fectly well all through life, and a deep wrong is as 
 difficult to forget. The reason is, I should say, 
 because the Indian does not meet with a great deal 
 of kindness as he goes through life. His mind and 
 memory are hardly overtaxed, I think, in remem 
 bering good deeds from the white man. 
 
 Besides, their lives are very monotonous. But 
 few events occur of importance outside their wars. 
 They have no commercial speculations to call off the 
 mind in that direction; no books to forget them 
 selves in, and cannot go beyond the sea, and hide 
 in old cities, to escape any great sorrow that pur 
 sues them. So they have learned to remember the 
 good and the bad better than do their enemies. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE LOST CABIN. 
 
 THE snow began to fall, and Paquita did not 
 return. 
 
 Elk came down the mountain toward the spring, 
 and we could shoot them from our cabin door. 
 At this season of the year, as well as late in the 
 fall, they are found in herds of hundreds together. 
 
 It seems odd to say that they should go up fur 
 ther into the mountains as winter approaches, 
 instead of down into the foot-hills and plains be 
 low, as do the deer, but it is true. There are 
 warm springs in fact, all mountain springs are 
 warmer in the winter than in the summer up the 
 mountain, where vine-maple, a kind of watercress, 
 and swamp briars grow in the warm marshes or on 
 the edges, and here the elk subsist. When the 
 maple and grasses of one marsh are consumed, 
 they break through the snow in single file, led in 
 turns by the bulls, to another. 
 
 Hundreds in this way make but one great track, 
 much as if a great, big log had been drawn to and 
 
 fro through the snow. The cows come up last, 
 
 (183) 
 
I 84 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 to protect the calves in the line of march from the 
 wolves. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that elk use their 
 splendid horns in battle. These are only used to 
 receive the enemy upon, a sort of cluster of bay 
 onets in rest. All offensive action is with the feet. 
 An elk s horns are so placed on his head, that, when 
 his nose is lifted so as to enable him to move about 
 or-^see his enemy, they are thrown far back on his 
 shoulders, where they are quite useless. He strikes 
 out with his feet, and throws his head on the ground 
 to receive his enemy. You have much to fear 
 from the feet of an elk at battle, but nothing from 
 his matchless antlers. 
 
 The black bears here also go up the mountain 
 when the winter approaches. They find some hoi- 
 
 I 
 
 low trunk, usually the trunk of a sturdy tree, and 
 creep into it close down to the ground. Here they 
 lie till snowed in and covered over, very fat, for 
 months and months, in a long and delightful sleep, 
 and never come out till the snow melts away, or 
 they have the ill-fortune to be smelled out by the 
 Indian dogs. 
 
 Whenever Indians find a black bear thus, they 
 pound on the tree and call to him to come out. 
 They challenge him in all kinds of bantering Ian- 
 
THE LOST CABIN. 1 85 
 
 guage, call him a coward and a lazy, fat old fellow, 
 that would run away from the squaws, and would 
 sleep all summer. They tell him it is springtime 
 now, and he had better get up and come out and 
 .see the sun. The most remarkable thing, however, 
 is, that, so soon as the bear hears the pounding on 
 the tree, he begins to dig and endeavor to get out ; 
 so that the Indians have but little to do, after his 
 den is discovered, but to sit down and wait till he 
 crawls out blinking and blinded by the light in his 
 small, black eyes and dispatch him on the spot. 
 Bears, when taken in this way, are always plump 
 and tender, and fat as possible ; a perfect mass of 
 white, savory oil. 
 
 I sometimes think we partook somewhat of the 
 nature of the bear, in our little snowy cabin among 
 the firs that winter, for, before we hardly suspected 
 it, the birds came back, and spring was fairly upon 
 us. 
 
 When the snow had disappeared, and our horses 
 grew sleek and fat and strong again, Klamat and I 
 rode far into the pines together and found a lake 
 where the wild geese built nests, in the margin 
 among the tules. 
 
 The Prince and the Doctor went up the canon 
 in search of gold, for want of something better to 
 
1 86 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 do, and, by the time the summer set in, had found 
 a rich " pocket " in a quartz ledge, up toward the 
 mountain top. 
 
 Paquita had not returned. We had come almost 
 not to mention her now at all. Often and often, 
 all through the spring and early summer, I saw the 
 Prince stand out as the sun went down, and shade 
 his brow with his hand, looking the way she had 
 gone. I think it was this that kept him here so 
 faithfully. 
 
 The Doctor sometimes took long journeys down 
 toward the valley to the south, and even fell in with 
 white men, as well as Indians, in that direction, and 
 thought of going down that way out of the reach 
 of the snow, and buildinghim a house for the winter. 
 No one objected to this; and, when he was ready to 
 go away, the Prince compelled him to take half the 
 gold they had taken from the " pocket, "even against 
 his utmost remonstrance. 
 
 11 Take it," said the Prince, " every ounce of it. 
 Here it is not worth that much lead." And he put 
 the buckskin bag into the Doctor s catenas, and 
 resolutely buckled them down. 
 
 Another incident worth mentioning in the con 
 duct of the Prince was his earnest entreaty with the 
 Doctor to never reveal the existence of the mine, 
 
THE LOST CABIN. 1 87 
 
 His reason was of the noblest kind, sufficient, above 
 every selfish consideration. 
 
 " In the first place," said he "gold is of doubtful 
 utility to the world at best. But if this mine is 
 made known, a flood of people will pour in here; 
 the game, the forests, all this wild, splendid part 
 of nature will disappear. The white man and the 
 red man will antagonize, the massacre of the Klamat 
 will be repeated; and for all this, what will be the 
 consideration?" 
 
 For my own part, I would banish gold and silver, 
 as a commercial medium, from the face of the earth. 
 I would abolish the use of gold and silver altogether, 
 have paper currency, and but one currency in all 
 the \vorld. I would take all the strong men now 
 in the mines down from the mountains, and build 
 ships and cities by the sea. 
 
 These thousands of men can, at best, in a year s 
 time, only take out a few millions of gold. A ship 
 goes to sea and sinks with all these millions, and 
 there all that labor is lost to the world forever. 
 Had these millions been in paper, only a few hours 
 labor would have been lost. There are two 
 hundred thousand men, the best and bravest men 
 in the world, wasting the best years of their lives 
 getting out this gold. They are turning over the 
 
1 88 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 mountains, destroying the forests, and filling up the 
 rivers. They make the land unfit even for savages. 
 Take them down from the mountains, throw one-half 
 their strength and energy against the wild, rich sea- 
 border of the Pacific, and we would have, instead 
 of those broken mountains, muddied rivers, and 
 ruined forests, such an Eden as has not been seen 
 
 by man since the days of Adam. 
 
 ###**** 
 
 At last Paquitacame. The Prince went forth to 
 meet her with his arms held out, but she was too 
 bashful and beautiful to touch. 
 
 And why had she not returned before? It is a 
 sad story, but soon told. 
 
 When she reached the region of her father s camp 
 she found the grass growing in the trails. She 
 found no sisters to receive her; no woman to bring 
 her water; not a human being in all the lodges. 
 The weeds grew rank, and the wolves had posses 
 sion. 
 
 The white men in her absence had made another 
 successful campaign against her people. The 
 Indians had become dispirited, and, never over- 
 provident, finding the country overrun, the game 
 made wild and scarce, and the fish failing to come 
 up the muddied Sacramento, they had neglected to 
 
THE LOST CABIN. 189 
 
 prepare for winter, and so had perished by whole 
 villages. 
 
 These singular people perish so easily from con 
 tact with the whites, that they seem to me like the 
 ripened fruit ready to fall at the first shaking. 
 
 She had found none of her tribe till she passed 
 away on to the Tula lakes, and then of all her family 
 found only two brothers. These had now come 
 with her on her return. 
 
 They dismounted, and built a fire under the trees 
 and apart from us, and only slowly came to com 
 municate, to smoke, and show any friendship at all. 
 Paquita was all kindness; but she had become a 
 woman now; the state of things was changed. 
 Then, the eyes of her sober, savage brothers who 
 could ill b rook the presence of the white man, much 
 less look with favor on familiarities were upon 
 her, and she became a quiet, silent Indian woman, 
 instead of the lively maiden who h id frolicked on 
 the hillsides and wandered through the woods the 
 year before. 
 
 They remained camped here many days. Klamat 
 took the young chiefs up to the mine only a little 
 crevice in the rotten quartz and they looked at it 
 long and curiously. Then they picked up some 
 little pieces of gold that lay there, looked at them, 
 
MY OWN STORY. 
 
 put them in their mouths, spat them out, and threw 
 them down on the ground. 
 
 After that they came down to the cabin. 
 
 " You have saved our sister," the eldest said, 
 among other things, " and we like you for that, and 
 owe you all that we can give; but you did not save 
 her from a bear or a flood you only saved her 
 from your own people; so that is not so much. But, 
 even if you did save one of us in the bravest way, 
 that is no reason why you should help to destroy us 
 all. If you bring men and dig gold here, we must 
 all die. We know how that is. You may stay 
 here, dig gold, hunt, live here all your lives; but, if 
 you let this be known, and bring men up here, we 
 will shoot them from behind the trees, steal their 
 horses, and destroy them every way we can." 
 
 Paquita herself repeated this, interpreted what 
 we did not understand, and told us emphatically 
 that what her brothers said was true. 
 
 The Prince answered very kindly and earnestly. 
 He told them they were right. He told them that 
 no one should hear of the mine; and, at the last, he 
 lifted up his hand to Mount Shasta, and, before the 
 God of the white man and the red man, promised 
 that no white man should come there, with his con 
 sent, while he remained. 
 
THE LOST CABIN. 1 91 
 
 Paquita returned soon after this with her people 
 to her village, and it was lonely enough to be sure. 
 The Prince grew restless. We mounted our horses, 
 and set out for the settlement to procure ammunition 
 and supplies. We went by a circuitous way to 
 avoid suspicion. 
 
 The Indian boy, our strange manner of dress, and 
 the Prince s lavish use of money, soon excited re 
 mark and observation. New rich mines were be 
 coming scarce, and there were hordes of men wait 
 ing eagerly in every camp for some new thing to 
 come to the surface. 
 
 One day the Prince met a child in an immigrant 
 camp, the first he had seen for a long time. He 
 stopped, took from his buckskin purse a rough nug 
 get, half quartz and half gold, gave it to the boy, 
 patted him on the head, and passed on. A very 
 foolish thing. 
 
 After obtaining our supplies, we set out to return. 
 The evening of the last day in the settlement we 
 camped under the trees by a creek, close by some 
 prospectors, who came into our camp after the blan 
 kets were spread, and sat about the fire cursing 
 their hard luck; long-haired, dirty-habited, and 
 ugly-looking men they were. One was a sickly- 
 looking man, a singularly tall, pale man, who had 
 
IQ2 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 but little to say. There was .some gold left. It was 
 of no possible use to us. The Prince took him to 
 one side, gave him the purse, and told him to take 
 it and go home. Another extremely silly thing. 
 This man, meaning no harm of course, could not 
 keep the secret of the few hundred dollars worth of 
 gold dust, and soon the whole affair, wonderfully 
 magnified too, was blown all over the country. 
 
 When we found we were being followed, we led 
 a sorry race indeed, and went in all directions. 
 Klamat entered into the spirit of it, and played 
 some strange forest tricks on the poor prospectors. 
 
 We eluded them all at last, and reached the cabin. 
 But we had laid the foundation for many a mount 
 ain tale and venture. 
 
 What extravagant tales were told! There was a 
 perfect army of us half Indians, half white men. 
 Our horses were shod backward an old story. 
 Then, again, our horses feet were bound up in 
 gunny-bags, so as to leave no track. An impos 
 sible thing, for a horse will not take a single step 
 with his feet in muffles. To this day men still 
 search the Sierras for "the Lost Cabin." 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 GOOD-BYE. 
 
 WE received a visit from the chief of the Shas- 
 tas on our return. He was not a tall man, as one 
 would suppose who had seen his warriors, but a 
 giant in strength. You would have said, surely 
 this man is part grizzly bear. He was bearded like 
 a prophet. 
 
 I now began to spend days and even weeks in an 
 Indian village over toward the south in a canon, to 
 take part in the sports of the young men, listen to 
 the teachings and tales of the old, and was not un 
 happy. 
 
 The Prince was losing his old cheerfulness as 
 the summer advanced, and once or twice he half 
 hinted of taking a long journey away to the world 
 below. 
 
 At such times I would so wish to ask him where 
 was his home, and why he had left it, but could not 
 summon courage. As for myself, let it be here 
 understood, once for all, that, when a man once 
 casts his lot in with the Indians, he need return to 
 
 his friends no more, unless he has grown so 
 13 (193) 
 
194 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 strong of soul that he does not need their counte 
 nance, for he is, with them, disgraced forever. I 
 had crossed the Rubicon. 
 
 It was the time of the Autumn Feasts, when the 
 Indians mdet together on a high oak plain, a 
 sort of hem of the mountain, overlooking the far 
 valley of the Sacramento, to celebrate the season 
 in dance and song, and recount the virtues of 
 their dead. On this spot, among the oaks, their 
 fathers had met for many and many a generation. 
 Here all were expected to come in rich and gay 
 attire, and to give themselves up to feasting and 
 the dance, and show no care in their faces, no 
 matter how hard fortune had been upon them. 
 
 Indian summer, this. A mellowness and balm in 
 all the atmosphere; a haze hanging over all things, 
 and all things still and dreamful like, like a sum 
 mer sunset. 
 
 The manzanita berries were yellow as gold, the 
 rich anther was here, the maple and the dogwood 
 that fringed the edge of the plain were red as scar 
 let, and set against the wall of firs in their dark, 
 eternal green. 
 
 The scene of the feast was a day s ride from the 
 cabin, and the Prince and I were expected to at 
 tend. Paquita would, of course, be there, and who 
 
GOOD-BYE. 195 
 
 shall say we had not both looked forward to this 
 day with eagerness and delight? 
 
 We went to the feast rode through the forest in 
 a sort of dream. How lovely! The deer were go 
 ing in long bands down their worn paths to the plains 
 below, away from the approaching winter. The 
 black bears were fat and indolent, and fairly shone 
 in their rich, oily coats, as they crossed the trail 
 before us. 
 
 Hundreds were at the feast, and we were more than 
 welcome. The chief came first, his warriors by his 
 side, to give us the pipe of peace and welcome, and 
 then a great circle gathered around the fire, seated 
 on their robes and the leaves; and, as the pipe went 
 round, the brown girls danced gay and beautiful, 
 half nude, in their rich black hair and flowing 
 robes. 
 
 But Paquita was shy. She would not dance, 
 for somehow she seemed to consider that this was 
 a kind of savage entertainment, and out of place 
 for her. She had seen just enough of civilized life 
 to deprive her of the pleasures of the wild and 
 free. 
 
 There had grown a cast of care upon her lovely 
 face of late. She was in the secret of all the 
 Indians plans. At least she was a true Indian 
 
196 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 true to the rights of her race, and fully awake to a 
 sense of their wrongs. 
 
 She was surely lovelier now than ever before; tall, 
 and lithe, and graceful as a mountain lily swayed by 
 the breath of morning. On her face, through the 
 tint of brown, lay the blush and flush of maiden 
 hood , the indescribable sacred something that makes 
 a maiden holy to every man of manly nature. There 
 is a love that makes a man utterly unselfish, and 
 perfectly content to love and be silent, to worship 
 at a distance, as turning to the holy shrine of 
 Mecca, to be still and bide his time; caring not to 
 possess in the low, coarse way that characterizes 
 your common lover of to-day, but choosing, rather, 
 to go to battle for her bearing her in his heart 
 through many lands, through storms, and on down 
 to the doors of death, with only a word of hope, a 
 smile, a wave of the hand from a wall, a kiss blown 
 far, as he mounts his battle horse below and 
 plunges into the night. That is a love to live for. 
 I say the knights of Spain, bloody as they were, 
 were a noble and splendid type of men in their way. 
 
 The Prince was of this manner of men. He was 
 by nature a knight of the brave old days of Spain, 
 a hero born out of time, and blown out of place, 
 in the mines and mountains of the North. 
 
GOOD-BYE. 197 
 
 Once he had taken Paquita in his arms, had folded 
 a robe around her as if she had been a babe. She 
 was all everything to him. He renounced all 
 this. Now he did not even touch her hand. 
 
 The old earnestness and perplexity had come 
 upon the Prince again on our coming to the feast. 
 Once, when the dance and song ran swift and loud, 
 and all was merriment, I saw him standing out from 
 the circle of warriors, of young maidens and men, 
 with folded arms, looking out on the land below. I 
 had too much respect, nay reverence, for this man 
 to disturb him. I leaned against a tree and looked 
 as he looked. Once his eyes left the dance before 
 him, and stole timidly toward the place where 
 Paquita sat with her brother watching the dance. 
 What a devotion in his face. I could not under 
 stand him. Then he turned to the valley again, 
 tapped the ground with his foot in the old, restless 
 way, but his eyes soon wandered back to Paquita. 
 At last my gaze met his. He blushed deeply, held 
 down his head and walked away in silence. 
 
 The next day was the time set apart for feats of 
 horsemanship. The band of mustangs was driven 
 in, all common property, and the men selected their 
 horses. The Prince drew out with his lasso a stout 
 black stud, with a neck like a bull. His mane 
 
198 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 poured down on either side, or stood erect like a 
 crest; a wiry, savage, untrained horse that struck out 
 with his feet, like an elk at bay. The Prince sad 
 dled him, and led him out all ready now, where 
 the other horses stood in line, then came to me, 
 walked a little way to one side, put out one hand, 
 and with the other drew me close to him, held down 
 his head to my uplifted face, and said : 
 
 " Good-bye." 
 
 I sprang up and seized hold of him, but he went 
 on calmly : 
 
 " I must go away. You are happy here ; you 
 will remain, but I must go. After many years I 
 may return. You may meet me here on this spot, 
 years and years from to-day. Yes, it will be 
 many years ; a long time. But it is short enough, 
 and long enough. I will forget her it I will 
 forget by that time, you see, and, then, there is all 
 the whole world before me to wander in." 
 
 He made the sign of departure. The chief came 
 forward, Paquita came and stocd at his side. He 
 reached his hands, took her in his arms, pressed her 
 to his breast an instant, kissed her pure brow once, 
 with her great black eyes lifted to his, but said no 
 word. 
 
 The Indians were mute with wonder and sorrow. 
 
THE DEPARTURE OF THE PRINCE. 
 
GOOD-BYE. 199 
 
 When you give the sign of going, there is no one to 
 say nay here. No one importunes you to stay ; 
 no one says come to my place or come to 
 mine. No such folly. You know that you are wel 
 come to one and all, and they know, that, if you 
 wish to go, you wish to go, and that is all there is 
 of it. This is the highest type of politeness ; the 
 perfect hospitality. 
 
 The Prince turned to his horse, drew his red 
 silk sash tighter about his waist, undid the lasso, 
 wound the lariat on his arm, and wove his left 
 hand in the flowing mane as the black horse 
 plunged and beat the air with his feet. Then he 
 set him back on his haunches, and sprang from the 
 ground: then forward plunged the stud, with mane 
 like a storm, down the place of oaks, pitching 
 toward the valley. 
 
 The trees seemed to open rank as he passed, 
 and then to close again; a hand was lifted, a kiss 
 thrown back across the shoulder, and he was gone 
 gone down in the sea below us, and I never 
 saw my Prince again for many a year. Noble, 
 generous, self-denying Prince ! The most splendid 
 type of the chivalric and perfect man I had ever 
 met. 
 
 All this was so sudden that I hardly felt the 
 
2OO MY OWN STORY. 
 
 weight of it at first, and, for want of something to 
 do to fill the blank that followed, I mounted my 
 horse and took part in the sports with the gayest 
 of the gay. 
 
 Indians do not speak of anything that happens sud 
 denly. They think it over, all to themselves, for 
 days, unless it is a thing that requires some action 
 or expression at once, and they then speak of it 
 only cautiously and casually. It is considered very 
 vulgar, indeed, to give any expression to surprise, 
 and nothing is more out of taste than to talk about 
 a thing that you have not first had good time to 
 think about. 
 
 During the day I noticed that my catenas were 
 heavier than usual, and, unfastening the pockets, I 
 found that they contained all four of the bags of 
 gold. 
 ***** 
 
 Why had he left himself destitute? Why had he 
 gone down to battle with the world without a 
 shield ? gone to fight Goliath, as it were, without 
 so much as a little stone. I wanted to follow him, 
 and make him take the money all of it. I despised 
 it; it made me miserable. But I had learned to obey 
 him to listen to him in all things. And, was he 
 not a Prince? 
 
GOOD BYE. 2OI 
 
 " Ah ! " said I to myself, at last, " he has gone 
 down to take possession of his throne. He will 
 cross the seas, and see maidens fair indeed, nearly 
 as lovely in some respects as Paquita; " and this 
 was my consolation. 
 
 " Years and years," I said to myself, that night, 
 as I looked in the fire, and the dance went on; 
 " Years and years! " I counted it upon my fingers, 
 
 and said: " I will be dead then." 
 
 ******* 
 
 The marriage ceremony of these people is not 
 imposing. The father gives a great feast, to which 
 all are invited, but the bride and bridegroom do 
 not partake of food. A new lodge is erected and 
 furnished more elegant than any other of the vil 
 lage, by the women, each vying with the other to 
 do the best in providing their simple articles of the 
 Indian household. 
 
 In the evening, while the feast goes on, and the 
 father s lodge is full of guests, the women and chil 
 dren come to the lodge with a great number of 
 pitch torches, and two women enter and take the 
 bride away between them; the men all the time 
 taking no heed of what goes on. They take her to 
 the lodge, chanting as they go, and making a great 
 flourish with their torches. Late at night the men 
 
2O2 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 rise up, and the father and mother, or those stand 
 ing in their stead, take the groom between them 
 to the lodge, while the same flourish of torches and 
 chant goes on as before. They take him into the 
 lodge, and set him on the robes by the bride. 
 This time the torches are not put out, but are laid 
 one after another in the center of the lodge. And 
 this is the first fire of the new pair, which must 
 not be allowed to die out for some time. In fact, 
 as a rule, in time of peace, Indians never let their 
 lodge-fires go out so long as they remain in one 
 place. 
 
 When all the torches are laid down and the fire 
 burns bright, they are supposed to be married. 
 The ceremony is over, and the company go away 
 
 in the dark. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Late that autumn, these Indians made the mar 
 riage feast, and at that feast neither I nor the 
 beautiful Indian girl took meat. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE LAST OF THE LOST CABIN. 
 
 THESE Indians use but few words. A coward 
 and a liar is the same with them ; they have no 
 distinct terms of expressing the two sins. Some 
 times a single eloquent gesture means a whole sen 
 tence, and expresses it, too, better than could a 
 multitude of words. 
 
 1 said to the old chief one day: 
 
 " Your language is very poor ; it has so few 
 words. " 
 
 " We have enough. It does not take many 
 words to tell the truth," he answered. 
 
 " Ah, but we have a hundred words to your 
 one." 
 
 " Well, you need them." 
 
 He seemed to say, " Yes, from the number of lies 
 you have told us, from the long treaties that meant 
 nothing that you have made with us ; from the 
 promises that you have made and broken, I should 
 say that you needed even a thousand words to our 
 one. 
 
 The old Indian arose as he said this, and gath- 
 
 (*>3) 
 
204 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 ered his blanket about his shoulders. His dog lay 
 with his nose on his two paws, and his eyes raised 
 to his master s. 
 
 " You have not words enough in all your books 
 to give a single look from the eyes of my dog." 
 
 He drew his blanket closer about him, turned 
 away, and the dog arose and followed him. 
 
 I had a pocket Bible with me once, in his camp. 
 I showed it to the chief, and undertook to tell him 
 what it was. 
 
 " It is the promise of God to man," I said, " His 
 written promise to us, that, if we do as He com 
 manded us to do, we shall live and be happy for 
 ever when we die." 
 
 He took it in his hand, and looked at the outside 
 and inside very attentively. 
 
 "Promises! Is it a treaty?" 
 
 " Well, it is a treaty, perhaps; at least, it is a 
 promise, and He wrote it." 
 
 " I do not like promises or long treaties. I do 
 not like any treaties on paper. They are so easy 
 to break. The Indian does not want his God 
 to sign a paper. He is not afraid to trust his 
 God." 
 
 " But the promises and the resurrection ? " I 
 urged- 
 
THE LAST OF THE LOST CABIN. 2O5 
 
 He pointed to the new leaves on the tree, the 
 spears that were bursting through the ground, 
 handed me the book and said no more. 
 
 The Prince was gone, perhaps to never return. 
 I was again utterly alone with the Indians. I 
 looked down and out upon the world below as 
 looking upon a city from a tower, and was not 
 unhappy. 
 
 I lived now altogether with the chief. His lodge 
 was my home ; his family my companions. We 
 rode swift horses, sailed on the little mountain 
 lakes with grass and tule sails, or sat down under 
 the trees in summer, where the wind came through 
 from the sea, and drank in silently the glories and 
 calm delights of life together. 
 
 " They will find your lost cabin yet," said the chief, 
 " if it is allowed to stand. Then they will search till 
 they find the mine, then a crowd of people will 
 come, like grasshoppers in the valley ; my warriors 
 will be murdered, my forests cut down, my grass 
 will be burned, my game driven off, and my people 
 will starve. As their father, to whom they look for 
 protection and support, I cannot allow itto stand." 
 
 " It shall be as you say. Send some men with 
 me. What care I for the cabin? and what is a mine 
 of gold to me here ?" 
 
206 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 We went down, we burned the cabin to the 
 ground. 
 
 Years afterward I passed there, and all was wild 
 and overgrown with grass, the same as if no 
 man had ever sat down and rested there below the 
 boughs. 
 
 Some pines that stood too close to the burning 
 cabin were shorn of branches on one side, and, where 
 the bark had burned on that side, they were gnarled 
 and seared, and stood there parched up and ugly in 
 a circle, as if making faces at some invisible object 
 
 in their midst. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 And now, for the first time, a plan which had 
 been forming in my mind ever since I first found 
 myself among these people began to take definite 
 shape. It was a bold and ambitious enterprise, 
 and was no less a project than the establishment of 
 a sort of Indian Republic "a wheel within a 
 wheel," with the grand old cone, Mount Shasta, in 
 the midst. 
 
 To the south, reaching from far up on Mount 
 Shasta to far down in the Sacramento Valley, lay 
 the lands of the Shastas, with almost every variety 
 of country and climate; to the southeast the Pitt 
 River Indians, with a land rich with pastures, and 
 
THE LAST OF THE LOST CABIN. 2O/ 
 
 plains teeming with game; to the northeast lay the 
 Modocs, with lakes and pasture-lands enough to 
 make a State. My plan was to unite these three 
 tribes in a confederacy under the name of the 
 United Tribes, secure by treaty all the lands near 
 the mountain, even if we had to surrender all the 
 other lands in doing so. 
 
 It might have been called a kind of Indian reser 
 vation, but it was to be a reservation in its fullest 
 and most original sense, such as those first allotted 
 to the Indians. Definite lines were to be drawn, 
 and these lines were to be kept sacred. No white 
 man was to come there without permission. The 
 Indians were to remain on the land of their fathers. 
 They were to receive no pay, no perquisites or 
 assistance whatever from the government. They 
 were simply to be let alone in their possessions, 
 with their rites, customs, religion and all, unmo 
 lested. They were to adopt civilization by degrees 
 and as they saw fit, and such parts of it as they 
 chose to adopt. They were to send a representa 
 tive to the State and the national capitals if they 
 chose, and so on through a long catalogue of details 
 that would have left them in possession of that lib 
 erty which is as dear to the Indian as to any being 
 on earth. 
 
208 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 Filled with plans for my little republic, I now 
 went among the Modocs, whom I had always half 
 feared since the day they had killed and plundered 
 the Mexicans, and boldly laid the case before them. 
 They were very enthusiastic, and some of the old 
 councilmen named me chief; yet I never had any 
 authority to speak of till too late to use it to 
 advantage. 
 
 I drew maps and wrote out my plans, and sent 
 them to the commanding officer of the Pacific 
 Coast, the Governor of the State, and the Presi 
 dent of the Republic. 
 
 The Indians entered into it with all their hearts. 
 Their great desire was to have a dividing line or 
 a mark that would say, Thus far will we come, and 
 no farther. They did not seem to care about 
 details or particularly where the line would be 
 drawn, only that it should be drawn, and leave 
 them secure in bounds which they could call their 
 own. They would submit to almost anything for 
 this. 
 
 Remove they would not ; but they were tired of 
 a perpetual state of half-war, half-peace, that 
 brought only a steady loss of life and of land, with 
 out any lookout ahead for the better, and would 
 
THE LAST OF THE LOST CABIN. 2OQ 
 
 enter into almost any terms that promised to let 
 them and theirs permanently and securely alone. 
 
 How magnificent and splendid seemed my plan ! 
 Imagination had no limit. Here would be a 
 National Park, a place, one place in all the world, 
 where men lived in a state of nature, and, when 
 all the other tribes had passed away or melted into 
 the civilization and life of the white man, here 
 would be a people untouched, unchanged, to in 
 struct and interest the traveler, the moralist, all 
 men. 
 
 When the world is done gathering gold, I said, 
 men will come to these forests to look at nature, 
 and be thankful for the wisdom and foresight of 
 the age that preserved this vestige of an all but 
 extinct race. There was a grandeur in the thought, 
 a sort of sublimity, that I shall never feel again. 
 A fervid nature, a vivid imagination, and, above 
 all, the matchless and magnificent scenery, the 
 strangely silent people, the half-pathetic stillness 
 of the forests, all conspired to lift me up into an 
 atmosphere where the soul laughs at doubt and 
 never dreams of failure. A shipwrecked race, I 
 said, shall here take refuge. To the east and west, 
 to the north and south, the busy commercial world 
 may swell and throb and beat and battle like a sea; 
 
2IO MY OWN STORY. 
 
 but on this island, around this mountain, with 
 their backs to this bulwark, they shall look un 
 troubled on it all. Here they shall live as their 
 fathers lived before the newer pyramids cast their 
 little shadows, or camels kneeled in the dried-up 
 seas. 
 
 About midwinter the chief led his men up to 
 ward the higher spurs of the mountain for a great 
 hunt. After some days on the headwaters of the 
 McCloud, at some hot springs in the heart of a deep 
 forest and dense undergrowth, we came upon an 
 immense herd of elk. The snow was from five to 
 ten feet deep. We had snow-shoes, and, as the elk 
 vvere helpless, after driving them from the thin snow 
 and trails about the springs into the deep snow, 
 the Indians shot them down as they wallowed along, 
 by hundreds. 
 
 Camp was now removed to this place, with the 
 exception of a few who preferred to remain below, 
 and feasting and dancing became the order of the 
 winter. 
 
 Soon Klamat and a few other young and spirited 
 Indians said they were going to visit some other 
 camp that lay a day or two to the east, and dis 
 appeared. 
 
 In about a month they returned. After the usual 
 
THE LAST OF THE LOST CABIN. 211 
 
 Indian silence, they told a tale which literally froze 
 my blood. Indians had broken out, killed every 
 white man in the country, captured thousands of 
 head of stock, and restored the whole land again to 
 their own dominion. 
 
 There were no women or children in the valley 
 at the time of the massacre; only the men in charge 
 of great herds of stock. 
 
 This meant a great deal to me. I began to 
 reflect on what it would lead to. The affair, no 
 matter who was to blame, would be called a mas 
 sacre by the savages; of this I was certain. Possi 
 bly it was a massacre, but the Indian account of 
 it shows them to have been as perfectly justified as 
 ever one human being can be for taking the life of 
 another. 
 
 No one has ever seemed to be willing to under 
 stand why I choose to live with the Indians instead 
 of white people. Evil motives have forever been 
 laid at my door because I was the only white person 
 spared in this disaster. 
 
 I have been from that day to this charged with 
 having led the Indians in this massacre. I deny 
 nothing; simply tell what I know and all I know 
 as briefly as possible, and let it pass. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE EXPEDITION. 
 
 BUT, let it be remembered, I had friends among 
 the Indians, true and brave friends. And they 
 are as faithful to then* friends as any people on 
 earth. Yea, let me say this now at last over the 
 graves of these dead red men I owe them much. 
 I owe no white man anything at all. Looking 
 back over the long and dubious road of my event 
 ful life, I say this, surely I owe no white man for 
 favor, or friendship, or lesson of love, or forbear 
 ance of any sort. Yet, to the savage red men that 
 gathered about the base of Mount Shasta to battle 
 and to die, I owe much all that I am or can ever 
 hope to be. 
 
 It seemed incredible, this massacre; it seemed" 
 utterly impossible that I should now be the only 
 living white person in all the land. I took two 
 faithful young Indians, and, descending almost with 
 the rapidity of shot on our snowshoes to the flow 
 ers and green grasses of the far-off valley, I found 
 only dead bodies and burned ruins. 
 
 Let us hasten on over the peril and the pain 
 
 (212) 
 
THE EXPEDITION. 213 
 
 of the tedious return through the melting snows to 
 my own camp. Believing myself to be the first 
 white man to learn of the massacre, I now hastened 
 on alone to the nearest white habitation. 
 
 The fearful news had reached the city before me. 
 I found that the editor of the paper, Mr. Irwin, after 
 ward governor of California, and other leading 
 men, had placed a force already in the field, and 
 was advised to follow and use my knowledge of the 
 country in the interests of civilization. 
 
 I thought over my plans for the Indian Republic, 
 doubted, debated; but at last threw my energy 
 into the expedition against the rebellious Indians. 
 Having plenty of gold, I was soon splendidly 
 mounted, and on my way through the snow in the 
 track of the new troops. 
 
 Just as the stars began to glitter over the steep 
 and stupendous walls of snow which I was now 
 slowly climbing, I caught the cheering light of 
 many camp fires under the somber boughs of pine 
 and fir and cedar trees that dotted the mountain 
 slope. My splendid horse soon had his nose in a 
 barley bag along with others, and I broke bread 
 with as motley a set of men as ever grouped about 
 any camp fire on this earth. Could Shakespeare 
 have but seen that gang! Description at my hand 
 
214 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 would be impossible. Perhaps twenty-five of these 
 men had lost brother, father, friend, fortune, in the 
 massacre. These were sober and quiet enough. 
 Perhaps a like number had lost nothing, having had 
 nothing to lose, and were now merely adventurers, 
 on their way out to plunder the dead possibly. 
 Perhaps a like number were of the lowest form of 
 humanity; for the jails had been given a holiday. 
 Janus and the jail! The old Roman deity, the 
 god of battles, and the Yreka mining camp in Cali 
 fornia. The world is round, and history keeps on 
 reading the same old page in tireless repetition. 
 Janus and the open jail! And these men were to 
 be my companions through a campaign of long 
 and savage warfare! 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 A MAIDEN AND A LETTER. 
 
 THE braying pack-mules, the bellowing cattle, 
 the impatient horses pawing in the hard, deep 
 snow, and over and above all this the yelling of 
 wholly drunken or half-sober men, who now for the 
 first time were confronted by the fact that they had 
 to either cook or go hungry all this, along with 
 the many bright big camp-fires flashing over the 
 mountains of snow under the dense and sable pines, 
 made a scene Miltonic, demoniac, majestic. 
 
 To forecast the entire annihilation of this mob, 
 calling itself the " Army of Northern California," 
 had not been a hard task. Most of the men had 
 pistols in their belts, but their guns leaned in hope 
 less neglect, wet and empty, against the pines. 
 The Indians could easily glide in on the crusted 
 snow from the darkness that environed us and 
 tomahawk the last man. 
 
 But the next morning, brilliant with snow and 
 sunlight, found the men sleeping peacefully. One 
 by one they crawled forth from their blankets, now 
 
 sunken heavily in the snow from the weight and 
 
 (215) 
 
2l6 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 warmth of from two to ten half- drunken forms of 
 humanity, and stared hopelessly about. The great 
 roaring fires of the night before had sunken deep 
 down in the melting snow. Only here and there 
 the embers of some huge pine log still held fire 
 away down in the smoke-blackened pit that yawned 
 at the feet of the California Volunteers in their 
 blankets. From under the low boughs of a dwarf 
 yew tree, where I, along with my horse, had spent 
 the night, apart from the tumultuous crowd, I could 
 see little groups of men gathering on the side next 
 toward the little city, away below the snow, and a 
 day s journey behind us. These little groups would 
 accumulate, like rolling balls of snow, and then 
 break off", and silently but speedily turn their backs 
 on the half-awakened camp. They had had enough 
 of the first great campaign against the murderous 
 Modocs. There remained at informal roll-call only 
 two classes, the best and the worst. The worst 
 cared not, or dared not, to return to prison fare, 
 and the best of the men who had gotten up the 
 sudden expedition, felt that the eyes of.the State 
 were on them ; besides, that they had the massacre 
 to avenge ; to recover lost estates ; to reclaim once 
 more to civilization a region as large as all New 
 
A MAIDEN AND A LETTER. 217 
 
 England. These men could not desert now. But 
 what a dismal, smoky, doughy, dreadful breakfast! 
 
 As we sat or rather stood at breakfast, a tin cup 
 of coffee in the right hand and a sandwich of dough 
 and burnt bacon in the other, two tall and comely 
 Indian warriors stood over like silhouettes against 
 the rising sun on the crest of the snowy mountain 
 before us. Instantly I knew them for my two young 
 friends who had gone down into the valley of death 
 with me when we had first heard of the massacre. 
 
 Take a map and trace the route of my travel since 
 leaving my own camp, and you will see that in three 
 days I had made almost the entire circuit of the 
 grandest andsublimest snow peak in all the world. 
 I was now not forty miles from my own camp, my 
 own Indians. These swift and splendid young fel 
 lows had kept promise, and were coming to tell me 
 how things now stood. Their information, what 
 ever it might be, was of the greatest importance. 
 Did the compact with the Modocs still hold good? 
 Were Pitt River and Modoc and Shasta still friendly? 
 or had they quarreled over the plunder, after the 
 fashion of white nations? All this was important 
 to know. 
 
 But such a panic! Pistols in the air instantly! 
 A dozen, forty, fifty shots! The two tall and 
 
218 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 shapely figures melted back and away as they had 
 come. And that was all all except a " stampede " 
 of horses, cattle, mules, men! The cattle first 
 took fright at this apparition those two shapely 
 and shadowy savages on the steep, deep snow under 
 the pines that lifted before us and they, like the 
 men in the early morning, started for the world be 
 low! Then the mules, madly braying, followed the 
 bellowing cattle. Then the horses. Then some 
 of the men dashed bravely down the mountain after 
 their horses. And they never came back cattle 
 horses, mules or men! 
 
 Rodgers, the banker, whose father had fallen in 
 the massacre, pulled the remnant of men together 
 that afternoon, had what few cattle butchered that 
 had lodged in the snow, and, as night came on and 
 the crust of deep snow hardened, the little band 
 set forward silently, slowly, in single file, through 
 the deep, solemn woods to cross the Sierras. Each 
 man led a horse and drew a sled. The sled was 
 often only the hide of a bullock, with blankets, 
 bread, bacon, arms, ammunition, anything indeed 
 that fell to the lot of the man who drew the sledge 
 in the general distribution of provisions. Here 
 were stout, daring, audacious hearts now. There 
 is not room or need to say more. But pray give 
 
A MAIDEN AND A LETTER. 2 19 
 
 this brave little remnant of an army tender respect. 
 Napoleon on the Alps, the hunchback Hannibal 
 before him, were simply luxurious robbers in com 
 parison with this sobered and earnest little string 
 of men on their tortuous way through the pines to 
 recover a kingdom that had been lost to civiliza 
 tion. Cortez, drawing his ships by piecemeal over 
 the isthmus, knew nothing half so terrible in that 
 warm and luxurious land. For here with us, on 
 the very first night, nearly every man had feet, 
 face or hands badly frozen. And the wolves! 
 Before it was yet quite full dawn we were com 
 pelled to form a solid circle with our faces to the 
 wolves, our sleds and horses in the center. And 
 such beautiful teeth! We sat down on our sleds 
 facing the wolves. The wolves promptly sat down 
 right before us, their great red tongues lolling out 
 of their hungry mouths, their beautiful white teeth 
 glistening in perilous contrast. Two sleds of beef 
 had already been captured and instantly devoured. 
 " Look here! I ve cut myself somehow," whis 
 pered one of the men who had lost a sled. We only 
 discovered that he was hurt by the blood that made 
 the white snow red. This poor fellow was reputed 
 to be a professional pickpocket when at home in the 
 enjoyment of civilization and liberty. But he was 
 
22O MY OWN STORY. 
 
 a good soldier here, and did not even cry out when 
 a wolf tore away a handful of flesh from his leg; 
 but he merely laid it to some accidental awkward 
 ness of his, had his leg bandaged as we all sat there, 
 shivering and looking down into a thousand hungry 
 throats, waiting, praying for sunrise. But had that 
 poor pickpocket by sign or sound indicated that the 
 wolves had begun to eat our men as well as our 
 provisions, there would probably have been a two- 
 second panic! Then some few white bones on the 
 bloody snow the red epitaph over the common 
 grave of the " Army of Northern California." 
 
 When light came and the wolves went back a 
 little from our faces, we made roaring fires and 
 broiled, or rather burned, our beef, so that it would 
 be less heavy and, finally, less attractive to the 
 wolves in these terrible marches at night. While 
 this was being done I posted on alone with Captain 
 Rodgers, whom I had come to know and greatly 
 respect, if not to quite yet trust, to see, if possible, 
 if there was any abatement in the tremendous depth 
 of snow, for our sleds were worn and broken, our 
 horses were weak and failing for want of food. 
 After an hour or so we crossed a huge bear track, 
 or, rather, what Rodgers called a bear track. It was 
 simply the track of about twenty Modocs on the 
 
A MAIDEN AND A LETTER. 221 
 
 war-path ! They were going toward my own camp. 
 But I kept my own counsel. There was no turn 
 ing back now. To tell the worn band of men that 
 the Modoc was also with us would have insured a 
 sort of paralysis. It was push on now or perish. 
 
 This " bear track" at this time and place could 
 mean but one thing and how you need a map of 
 the whole thing here and that was war between 
 the three Indian tribes that hovered about the base 
 of Mount Shasta. Either this, or the Modocs 
 were merely on their way to my camp for plunder. 
 This broad bear track was pointing direct for either 
 my camp or the scalps of my Indians. In either 
 case the only immediate danger to the little army 
 was the danger of a panic. But this is the most 
 fearful danger that any man has to meet in 
 war, especially in the wilderness, where the wild 
 beasts, where even the elements, conspire to destroy. 
 
 Captain Rodgers sat down to rest, and I went on 
 alone to the top of a bold arid tremendous mount 
 ain of snow, from which the grasses and flowers of 
 the desolated valley could be seen. It was here 
 that I had rested with my two young Indians, both 
 on going to and returning from the scene of mas 
 sacre. We had left a letter here, in Indian charac 
 ters, and, as these two Indians who had created the 
 
222 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 panic before mentioned had probably passed this 
 way, I hoped to find a new letter from them here. 
 I was not disappointed. It took some patient 
 search, some circuitous and tedious delay, which I 
 have not time to set down, but this is the letter I 
 found on the inner side of a scale of sugar-pine 
 bark. Bear in mind that the sugar-pine tree is 
 always used by the Shasta Indians. You might 
 search the forest in vain for any sign on any other 
 tree than the sugar-pine. 
 
 To translate this letter may be tedious, but it 
 is absolutely necessary. In the first place, the 
 arrow is my name. The five dots are merely com 
 plimentary adjectives, as if to say: "My five 
 times brave and upright and five times faithful 
 brother." You see these Indians never count more 
 than five. If they wish to say " six," they simply 
 say " five and one," and so on. Twenty-five is 
 told by saying five times five. The arrow was 
 given me as the sign of my name, because, as told 
 before, I ld been dangerously shot in the face 
 with an arrow. The moon, dry and cold, and just 
 so many days old, is the date of the letter. And 
 now here is all the news ; and most important it 
 was, as you will see. The sign of the Modoc is the 
 reed, or rather the tule ; a long, slim line represents 
 
THB LETTER. 
 
A MAIDEN AND A LETTER. 223 
 
 the tule. This shows the early history of the 
 Modoc on his " floating islands " among the reeds 
 and tules of the lakes. The awkward figure, looking 
 like a demoralized hour-glass, represents the Pitt 
 River Indians. You see they come by this hour- 
 glass from an immemorial custom of defending 
 themselves against invasion by keeping a continual 
 girdle of blind pits drawn around the edge of their 
 vast and fertile valley. As these blind pits had 
 sharpened elk and deer antlers at the bottom, to say 
 nothing of deadly-pointed spears set point upward, 
 you may well understand that they were terrible 
 enough to give a name to any people. And do 
 you see here the tule, or reed, although badly 
 broken, is thrust downward entirely through the pit? 
 You can easily read that the battle was a bloody 
 one, and many Modocs were killed, as well as many 
 more of their enemies. 
 
 And what does the awkward and helpless and 
 overturned heart mean? And what is the round 
 and helpless little circle for? Ah, me! If I were 
 only permitted to write of that. If I had only con 
 tracted to write of love, and not entirely of war, in 
 this story, then I could tell alh But surely I may 
 be indulged to explain this tender little postscript 
 to this thoughtful and loving letter. Briefly, then, 
 
224 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 the year before some half hostile and wholly wild 
 Indians had visited my camp with a white girl, whom 
 they proposed to sell for two horses. The girl 
 could not talk to me or understand a word. She 
 had been a captive since a baby, and, as she did 
 not want to come to me, and as I would have surely 
 been misunderstood, I did not buy her, but waited, 
 hoping some white men might come my way and 
 help me with their presence and advice. And that 
 was all; I had never seen her any more. But I 
 had kept up constant inquiry for her, and had sent 
 word to Lieutenant Crook, now General Crook, and 
 famous in many wars, who was then in charge of 
 the nearest military post, of the fact about this poor 
 white girl prisoner. Of course, when the massacre 
 took place, the first question in my mind was as to 
 the fate of the white girl who was a prisoneramong 
 that nomadic band of savages. 
 
 Did I for get to say that she was beautiful? Beau 
 tiful she was as any dream of beauty. She was sad 
 and silent, piteously sad. She stood pulling at 
 the tasselcd tops of some tall grass at the side of 
 the trail, as the Indians sat on their ponies barter 
 ing. That was all sRe did, and said nothing. She 
 only looked at me once, out of her great sad eyes, 
 that nearly all the time kept looking down. And 
 
A MAIDEN AND A LETTER. 225 
 
 she did not speak, in any tongue, when I spoke to 
 her. And she would not come to me when I asked 
 her to. Nor did she give me her hand when I 
 offered her mine. 
 
 Let the fact be at once and frankly confessed 
 that it is doubtful if I should have gone down into 
 the valley of death after the massacre but for the 
 memory and the hope of this beautiful, sad and 
 silent girl. 
 
 And this brings us back to the postscript of the 
 Indian s letter on a bit of sugar-pine bark, which 
 may be briefly translated thus : " As for the matter 
 of the beautiful girl whose fate and sad fortune has 
 quite turned your tender heart upside d own, we 
 can only say that we have learned nothing at all ; 
 and all our search and inquiry has ended where \ve 
 began: in this narrow little circle." 
 
 And now let us return to the cold and cruel page 
 of war, and forget, so far as possible, the sad face and 
 the great lustrous eyes that may still be seen after 
 all these years looking out through " The Songs of 
 the Sierras. " It is best to try to believe, that, after 
 all, she was wholly indifferent to her condition. If 
 one could only think of her as a half-savage, as a 
 Mexican girl, as anything almost but a sensitive, 
 
 sad and shrinking captive, silent from the very awe 
 
 15 
 
226 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 and calamity of her position, from the memory of 
 a dead mother in the grass with her babes about 
 her, the father falling gun in hand, dying to de 
 fend her ! Oh the untold tragedies written in 
 blood on these forest leaves ! Let us hasten along. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A WILD CAMPAIGN. 
 
 " LET us sacrifice to the gods, as did good old 
 Ulysses," said Captain Rcdgers that night, as we 
 were again about to set forward in that dread 
 ful march through the wilderness the wolves 
 the snow! And, in imitation of the grand old 
 cattle-thief of the Iliad, we laid bones, hides, all 
 parts, indeed, that we did not want as did old 
 Ulysses on the roaring log fires, as we filed 
 past, in a long and dreary black line over and 
 through the white snow. And, if the " savor 
 thereof" was not " sweet to the nostrils of the 
 gods," it certainly was pleasant to the wolves. 
 These gaunt and ghastly creatures had already 
 formed a circle, a slowly narrowing circle of white 
 teeth; but the smell of roast bones and burning 
 hides was too potent an attraction for them to 
 abandon, and we soon had the infinite satisfaction 
 of leaving the greater part of these shaggy and 
 sharp-toothed creatures sitting in solemn circle 
 around the edge of our deserted camp, their 
 
 noses and long necks reaching forward. All night 
 
 (227) 
 
228 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 and all next day that weary and worn line of men 
 struggled on in sullen silence toward the summit 
 of the high, bald mountain, from which the great 
 valley with its grasses and its gorgeous flowers 
 could be seen. Sleds, horses, men, and, most 
 important of all, even guns and ammunition, lay 
 along that line of march almost from one end to the 
 other. The men were too weak and worn to fight 
 or even quarrel among themselves any more. 
 And that is saying they were pretty weak. 
 
 A warm south wind had been soughing through 
 the towering pines almost from the moment we set 
 out from the camp of wolves. This singular bit of 
 good fortune saved us, or at least many of us, 
 from being literally eaten alive. For the warm 
 winds and the melting snows drove the wolves back 
 toward their haunts in the high Sierras, or at least 
 kept them from crowding us too closely. And now 
 we were beset by a singular bird, the garrulous 
 magpie. This gaudy bird of gray and black and 
 white and parti-colored plumage had been increas 
 ing in numbers from the day we first began this 
 inarch through the Sierras. And now with the 
 warm weather they were in clouds. From the first 
 this noisy and insolent bird had sat on the backs of 
 our pack animals where their backs were sore, and 
 
A WILD CAMPAIGN. 22Q 
 
 literally eaten them alive. And now they had 
 grown so audacious that they would perch on even 
 the best of our animals, and pick at their eyes. We 
 had to blanket and blindfold gur saddle horses to 
 keep them from being devoured alive by these mag 
 pies. I have mentioned the fact that the winter had 
 been one of incredible severity, and this may ac 
 count in some sort for this plague of birds, as well 
 as wolves, on the summit of that high, bald mount- 
 ain,.with the green sea of grass rolling in billows at 
 its base. 
 
 But how glorious was this glad face of nature, 
 after the long and continued and most miserable 
 and inglorious contact with the face of man! Never 
 shall I forget those far-away flowers; the perfume 
 of them that came up to us in the snow from their 
 frank and open hearts. There was a fringe of yel 
 low on the outer line of the great green valley. 
 Buttercups! millions and myriads of millions of 
 golden buttercups! And the California poppy! 
 Away out in the heart of the valley, where the two 
 rivers, surging full from the melting snows, gath 
 ered their waters from the lakes that almost en 
 vironed the valley, lay miles and miles of snow- 
 white hyacinths. This wild hyacinth is odorless 
 here, but it is perfect in its beauty. In the heart 
 
23O MY OWN STORY. 
 
 of this wild white sea of sudden-born blossoms 
 slowly rose the smoke of many wigwams. The 
 Indians had gathered their forces and taken up 
 their defense on one of the many islands. This 
 was to be our battlefield. The plan of campaign 
 formed itself almost instantly in my mind, and that 
 feature of the work before me was dismissed. I 
 did not like to think of that. I had had enough of 
 strife, of hard and horrible enmity with man. I 
 wanted the flowers now. I wanted peace, rest. But 
 above all, I wanted to once more see the sad, sweet 
 face of that silent captive who had been brought to 
 me in my own camp only the year before. If I 
 could only find her, only once seeher face, it seemed 
 to me that the hard campaign with these coarse and 
 brutal men could be forever remembered as a gala 
 day. 
 
 From my journal, kept regularly all this time, 
 but mostly in the Indian sign, as that was briefer, 
 I read that, " on the first new moon of the third 
 month we were camped on snow seventeen feet 
 deep, with flowers only four miles distant." I read 
 further that " on the third day of the new moon we 
 had four fights over my election as captain," Cap 
 tain Rodgers being deposed by the popular vote of 
 the roughs. I, a boy, sensitive, shy, frail and 
 
A WILD CAMPAIGN. 231 
 
 slender as a girl, was in full command of this 
 miserable squad of humanity, with pickpockets 
 and jail birds in the majority. 
 
 I set to work at once to descend through the 
 fast-melting snow, and open an aggressive war even 
 before the arrival of re-enforcements from the 
 south. 
 
 By this time Rodgers, the deposed captain, and 
 I had become as brothers. I told him of the war 
 that had risen between the three tribes, to the exist 
 ence of which we surely owed the preservation of 
 this motley mob. " All Gaul is divided into three 
 parts," said Rodgers, gayly, quoting from Caesar in 
 good Latin. 
 
 Does it read strangely to you that this man, here 
 in these remote mountains, nearly forty years ago, 
 should also have shouted out in Greek the glorious 
 cry of the Ten Thousand when he, and he alcne, 
 stood at my side and first saw that sea of flowers 
 below ? Well, strange or not strange, I can only 
 tell the facts. 
 
 How bitter are the little feuds between helpless 
 little settlements and frontier towns. And Josephus 
 tells us that there never was in all history such 
 hatred as arose between the followings of John and 
 
232 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 of Simon at the time when Titus, the son of Ves 
 pasian, sat down in siege around about Jerusalem. 
 
 Well, in these awful enmities, read the reason 
 and secret of our being able to pierce the heart of 
 a hostile Indian country, to cut through the heart 
 of the Sierras, indeed, at a time worse than mid 
 winter, to sit down at the door of a brave and 
 powerful enemy, without firing a gun. The " three- 
 cornered " war among the Indians made our 
 approach not only possible but perfectly secure. 
 The Modoc was delighted to see us descend upon 
 the Pitt River, while he paid his attention to the 
 Shastas. They did not greatly dread us then. They 
 did not hate us half so bitterly as they hated one 
 another. 
 
 It was full-blown spring when we set foot among 
 the flowers at the base of the terrible spurs of 
 Mount Shasta. The men shouted with wild and 
 tumultuous delight. The horses, relieved of their 
 loads, rolled on the knee-deep grass; they threw 
 their weary heels in the air on the third day, and, like 
 the men, began to grow impatient of peace. Four 
 fights I find recorded for the third day. Indians 
 began to hover about us. They were tightening 
 their lines, and drawing their numbers, in increased 
 strength, to a solid circle, as did the wolves back 
 
A WILD CAMPAIGN. 233 
 
 i 
 
 in the fearful heights of snow. The singular good 
 fortune of the little army in escaping all peril thus 
 far, had made it insolent. It was ambitious to do 
 battle before the arrival of re-enforcements. 
 " When will we fight these red devils ? " 
 " We will fight when I get ready to fight." 
 That night the mob held another election, and 
 there was a new captain. This time the toughs 
 chose one of their own number, the best of their 
 number, it is true. But that is not high praise of 
 the new captain. 
 
 We had fired a good many shots, and we had 
 also gathered up many arrows that had been sent 
 us in return. But what the new captain most de 
 sired was not a dead, but a live Indian, one who 
 could tell him how near re-enforcements were, and 
 also tell the strength and condition of hostile camps. 
 And, with the capture of a live Indian in view, the 
 new captain, not at all a commander, signaled his 
 election to office by taking off his shoes and taking 
 after and attempting to run down and capture an 
 Indian with his own hand. 
 
 After that, discipline was utterly out of the ques 
 tion. Besides, we were now on quarter-rations. A 
 secure camp was selected and fortified, and we sat 
 down to wait for re-enforcements. And while wait- 
 
234 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 ing, and with only quarter-rations to keep up their 
 strength, thesegallant men certainly fought; fought 
 one another ! And these battles were not entirely 
 among the toughs, either. I had a young, fair- 
 haired friend, a boy in fact, and the youngest of the 
 expedition except myself. And it became abso 
 lutely a matter of necessity that either this fair- 
 haired boy, or Rodgers, or myself should fight one 
 of the insolent bullies. 
 
 And so this boy finally went at his work. He 
 fought like a Trojan, and refused to cry out. He 
 was beaten mercilessly beaten. He had ex 
 pected that, but he refused to cry out, and the 
 " tough s " friends, not so hard at heart, after all, 
 interfered at last of their own will, and led both boy 
 and bully, each one blinded from blood and bruises, 
 down to the river bank, and, as they washed their 
 wounds, praised my boy friend gloriously for his 
 valor. 
 
 Ah, me, my fair-haired little " Lum," this was 
 long, long ago; and your yellow hair, like mine 
 own, is taking on the whiteness of the snowbanks 
 that first knew our friendship. But, Lum Ray, I 
 love you now as I loved you then. It was for me, 
 a frailer boy, you fought, Lum Ray, years and 
 years ago, on the bloody grass there by the bending 
 
A WILD CAMPAIGN. 235 
 
 river, and I lay this little tribute of thanks at your 
 feet. 
 
 Reader, do you know that oftentimes I dislike 
 to tell all that I might tell of these old days? I 
 "tell the truth," but oftentimes not "the whole 
 truth." The world has gone forward far in the 
 path of civilization since then. Those terrific " fist- 
 fights " wereascommon, and, indeed, almost ascom- 
 pulsory in those days, if you meant to maintain 
 yourself, as the breathing of air. 
 
 And now let us speed forward with the conclu 
 sion of the war. After a ten-days siege, starvation, 
 fights both in camp among ourselves, and out 
 side with savages that hovered unpleasantly close 
 about the long-expected re-enforcements came 
 from the south. And then we feasted! And then 
 we fought a little more among ourselves, testing 
 the mettle of the new men, as it were; then another 
 election; then bloody work began! for the new 
 company had captured a small camp of Indians, 
 and from them learned that there was a white 
 woman prisoner on one of the islands in the great 
 valley. And my heart was in my throat. Was it 
 really she? What cared I for the desolated valley 
 and the dead! What cared I if one or one dozen 
 white women still survived the massacre? My only 
 
236 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 concern was, could it be this one, whose sad and 
 silent face I had looked upon, this piteously beau 
 tiful girl? 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE LOST CAPTIVE. 
 
 Do YOU know that these Indians here used the 
 yew-wood bow of which the Bible speaks? Singu 
 lar that the Modoc, the " yeoman " of Scotland and 
 David s men in the Bible should alike have used the 
 wood of the yew tree for their artillery! 
 
 But let us get forward to the battle in the water. 
 The melting snow had made the Indians on the 
 islands more than secure up to this time, for we had 
 no boats; but now the waters had flowed on, and 
 the low and fast subsiding condition of the spring 
 freshet was making the place accessible on horses. 
 On the last days of April we surrounded and 
 " stormed " the island on horseback. In most places 
 the water was too deep, and the men only lost their 
 arms and their temper while floundering in the 
 water. But two places were found where horses 
 could keep their footing. A second charge was 
 ordered, the mounted men taking only a single pis- 
 jtol this time in hand. This second charge was re 
 pulsed also, and not at all by the continued storm 
 
 of arrows, but because our horses suddenly came 
 
 (237) 
 
238 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 upon spears and elkhorns and sharp sticks that 
 pointed outward from the island. The water was 
 made bloody and ruddy from their wounds, and they 
 refused to go forward. At the third and final on 
 slaught the men stripped to the waist, and waded to 
 their necks, advancing from every side and firing 
 their pistols only, while the men in the grass kept" 
 firing at long range with larger artillery. 
 
 As for myself, I sat on a horse a little distance 
 back directing the fight. Suddenly I saw a great 
 commotion. Then boats shot out from every side. 
 It was a cunning and a most carefully planned 
 scheme, and brilliantly conducted on the part of the 
 Indians. " Save who can! " At first our men in 
 the water fell back. Then they rallied and fought 
 hand to hand, often up to their necks in the water. 
 
 Let it be confessed that it was a great satisfac 
 tion to see so many canoes filled with women and 
 children and old men dart through that band of 
 naked besiegers and escape to the wider waters, 
 the willows, the grass. But for all that the water 
 was red. It was the reading over again the bloody 
 page of Prescott, the Aztec, Cortez and his boats 
 on Tezcuco the bloody water! 
 
 There was one little boat that I from the first 
 noticed with concern ; for it held a young woman, 
 
THE LOST CAPTIVE. 239 
 
 who was singularly tall and slight and supple. 
 There was only one other person in this boat, a 
 bent old man. Guided by the girl s strong, sure 
 hand, the craft got through the besieging party and 
 came to land a few hundred yards from where I 
 sat, the girl landing first, stooping low, running 
 forward leading the bent old man, almost dragging 
 him in her swift run through the long, green grass. 
 I plunged forward; my horse sank to his knees, 
 then to his belly. I ran on after the fugitives on 
 foot. I did not even draw my pistol from the holster. 
 My mission was of love; not of war! But alas, 
 and alas, it was not she! The bent old man was 
 badly shot, and made the water in which the rank 
 grass stood bloody as they ran. He fell on his 
 back as I ran up, and kicked at me, trying to keep 
 me back for the girl to escape. But she refused to 
 run. She bent down over her father and held his 
 head up out of the water, glaring at me like a wild 
 beast. Her black eyes literally blazed. I turned 
 back and left them. 
 
 Out and up from the great rich valley of grasses 
 and flowers the Army of California rode on the first 
 day of May, leaving not one visible Indian behind. 
 Some of the horses were hung with scalps, as if 
 they had been hung in black fringe for a funeral. 
 
240 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 The Army of Northern California, as it rode out and 
 up from the valley through the glorious pines, was 
 literally loaded down with scalps, with plunder and 
 with vermin. 
 
 I left this wild string of howling human beings 
 on the first day out, and struck through the wil 
 derness alone for my own camp. I was fired upon 
 from ambush almost immediately, but contrived to 
 reach home; and, ifthe printer finds this MS. hard 
 to decipher, let the bullet wound and the broken 
 arm that I carried back with me be my excuse for 
 its bad condition. 
 
 And that beautiful and silent lady there alone 
 among the savages? Never another word or sign 
 of her. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 UNTOLD TRAGEDIES. 
 
 I NOW saw that I had made a grave mistake. 
 Indians are clannish. They may fight among each 
 other like the other people of the earth; but let 
 them be attacked by the common enemy, and they 
 make common cause. I had fought against their 
 brothers, and I was not to be at once forgiven 
 for that. On the other hand, I had sympathized 
 with the Indians. That also was a mortal crime, 
 an unpardonable offense, in the eyes of the whites. 
 
 Those of the Northern States who will remem 
 ber the -feeling that once was he[d in the Southern 
 States against those who sympathized with the 
 blacks will understand something of the feeling in 
 the West against those who take part with the 
 Indians. 
 
 I had attempted to sit on two seats at once, 
 and had slid between the two. It takes a big man 
 to sit on two chairs at once. Any man who has 
 the capacity to do such a thing, has also the good 
 sense not to attempt it. 
 
 My wound was severe. It was nearly a year 
 
 16 (241) 
 
242 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 before I was able to lift a hand. Yet all this time 
 what terror ! what tales of blood ! 
 
 The Indians came slowly back into the country, 
 but some never came. They had gone to the Pitt 
 River war. The rank grass is growing above their 
 ashes on the hills that look upon that winding, 
 shining river. 
 
 Klamat was never friendly after that. The 
 defeat of the Indians on all occasions, without 
 being able to inflict any injury in return, made 
 him desperate, and to see me among their enemies 
 did not add to his good nature. But Paquita was 
 the same the same gentleness in her manner, 
 the same deep sadness in her eyes as she tended 
 me. 
 
 The Doctor was-a day s journey distant, safe out 
 of all the trouble and tragedy. The Prince was 
 far away. I was alone and friendless. There was 
 not a day now that did not know some terrible 
 tragedy. Three proud and warlike tribes of red 
 men were dying. Their death throes were terrible. 
 Years and years after the events which I hastily 
 record, the armies of the United States antagonized 
 with a remnant of one of these tribes, the Modocs, 
 and made a red spot on the map that must remain 
 as long as history. And it is by this alone that 
 
UNTOLD TRAGEDIES. 243 
 
 you* are to read the terrible things that I lived 
 through in these early years. For I refuse to re 
 cord the long and bloody struggle. Enough to say 
 that there were battles fought here, battles that 
 would make a book of tragedy and pathos, that are 
 now entirely forgotten; for this was before the 
 day of telegraphs and special correspondents, and 
 all those who took part, save myself, the Indians 
 on one side, and the miners on the other, have 
 
 * 
 
 passed from the stage of action. Let us not linger, 
 but hasten to the sad conclusion. 
 
 Little Klamat, now a man, and a man of author 
 ity, was in the front. That fierce boy, burning 
 with a memory that possessed him utterly, and 
 made him silent, sullen, and desperate, cared not 
 where he fought or for whom he fought, only so 
 that he fought the common enemy. 
 
 Paquita ? What was she doing ? Molding 
 bullets ! grinding bread ! shaping arrow-heads 
 and stringing bows ! Maybe she was a sort of 
 Puritan mother, fighting the British for home and 
 hearthstone in the Revolution. Maybe she was a 
 Florence Nightingale nursing the British soldiers in 
 the Crimea. 
 
 I went down to the camp, where Klamat, Paquita, 
 and about one hundred warriors, with a few women 
 
244 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 who were nursing their wounded, were preparing 
 for the last final fight. Here we waited till the 
 Modocs came down, and the three tribes joined 
 their thinned forces, and made common cause. 
 
 Women were gathering roots for their half-starved 
 children, children whose parents had been slain, 
 lost in the woods, and wandering they knew not 
 whither. 
 
 Shots were exchanged. The miners dismounted, 
 and fought on foot. The Indians shot wildly, for 
 they were poorly armed; the miners shot with 
 deadly precision. Now and then a miner would be 
 carried to the rear, and now and then they would 
 charge up the hills or across the ravines, but that 
 was all that marked the events of the day till night 
 fall. 
 
 Toward nightfall the Indians, now entirely out of 
 ammunition, withdrew, leaving the miners, as usual, 
 masters of the ground. 
 
 Klamat had fallen in the fight, gun in hand, and 
 all his bravest warriors with him. 
 
 About midnight the women began to wail for the 
 dead from the hills. What a wail, and what a 
 night! There is no sound so sad, so heartbroken 
 and pitiful, as this long and sorrowful lamentation. 
 Sometimes it is almost savage, it is loud, and fierce, 
 
UNTOLD TRAGEDIES. 245 
 
 and vehement, and your heart sinks, and you sym 
 pathize, and you think of your own dead, and you 
 lament with them the common lot of man. Then 
 your soul widens out, and you begin to go down 
 with them to the shore of the dark water, to stand 
 there, to be with them and of them, there in the 
 great mysterious shadow of death, and to feel how 
 much we are all alike, and how little difference 
 there is in the destinies, the sorrows, and the sym 
 pathies of all the children of men. 
 
 We had not a single shot left, and but few ar 
 rows. While the old women were mourning their 
 dead from the hills, the few remaining warriors, 
 wounded, beaten, entirely broken in spirit, melted 
 away in the dark, deep woods that reached up 
 toward Mount Shasta. 
 
 I, too, could have escaped for a time in that 
 direction. But that would only have continued the 
 war and kept up the pursuit. For it was the white 
 man, the terrible, bloodthirsty renegade, they 
 wanted most of all. There could be neither truce 
 nor peace while this man lived among the Indians. 
 
 There were a few strong horses left. Why not 
 mount, and ride right down through the line at 
 daylight to the banks of the river, swim the river, 
 
246 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 climb the precipitous crags on the other side, and 
 escape to the south? 
 
 I spoke to Paqui.ta about this as morning broke, 
 and we could see the line of soldiers camp that 
 stretched between us and the river below. I 
 assured her, that, once on the other side of that 
 wide, deep water, I would be safe, for no man would 
 risk his life to follow. 
 
 She said not a single word, but turned away with 
 a sign that I should wait, and was gone. 
 
 Noon came and passed. Night was coming on. 
 The soldiers were tightening a line around us. Had 
 she, too, gone? Was I alone to be the sacrifice? 
 Not another creature than myself was now to be 
 seen in our camp. 
 
 Suddenly, through a cleft in a dense clump of 
 cedars, she came, leading two horses. She had 
 been waiting for the twilight to conceal her 
 movements. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE DEATH OF PAQUITA. 
 
 BUT what could she mean to do? why two 
 horses? 
 
 She did not keep me long in suspense. Hand 
 ing me the lariat of the stronger horse, she hastily 
 and without a word threw herself on the other, and, 
 beckoning me to follow, led hastily on straight down 
 toward the river; for the soldiers were already in 
 our rear, and closing around us fast. She struck 
 straight down for the wide, deep river, as I had first 
 indicated. She did not deviate or delay, but 
 dashed, full gallop, right through the lines, and 
 leaped boldly from the bank into the dark, swift 
 waters. 
 
 It was a fearful leap; not far, but sudden and ugly, 
 with everything against us. My horse and myself 
 went far down in the blue, cold river, but he rose 
 bravely, and struck out fairly for the other side. 
 
 But Paquita was not so fortunate. The river ran 
 in an eddy, and her bewildered horse spun round 
 and round in the whirlpool. 
 
 The soldiers discharged a volley as we disap- 
 
 (247) 
 
248 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 peared, but I think neither of us were touched this 
 first fire. My horse swam very slow, and dropped 
 far down the current. The soldiers came up, stood 
 on the bank, deliberately loaded, aimed their pieces, 
 and fired every shot of the platoon at me, but only 
 touched my horse. They had not yet discovered 
 Paquita, still struggling in the eddy, almost under 
 their feet. At last she got her horse turned and 
 struck out, diving, and holding on to the mane. 
 
 She was not forty feet from the soldiers when dis 
 covered. Pistols were drawn, and a hundred shots, 
 and still another hundred, rained down upon and 
 around the brave child. 
 
 I was down the stream out of reach, and nearing 
 the shore. I witnessed the dreadful struggle, look 
 ing back, clinging to my wounded horse s mane. 
 
 She would dive, would reappear, a volley of shot, 
 down again till almost stifled ; up, again a volley, 
 and shouts and shots from the shore. 
 
 It seemed she would never get away from out 
 the rain of lead. Slowly, oh how slowly ! her 
 wounded horse struggled on against the cold, blue 
 flood that boiled and swept about. 
 
 At last my spent horse touched a reach of sand 
 far below, that made a shoal from shore, and I 
 again looked back. 
 
THE DEATH OF PAQUITA. 249 
 
 My horse refused to go further, but stood bleed 
 ing and trembling in the water up to his breast, and 
 I managed to make land alone. I crept up the 
 bank, clutching the long, wiry grass and water- 
 plants. I drew myself up, and sat down on the 
 rocks, still warm from the vanished sunshine. 
 
 When I had strength to rise, I went up the warm, 
 grassy river-bank, peering through the tules in an 
 almost hopeless search for my companion. Noth 
 ing was to be seen. The troops on the other bank 
 had gone away, not knowing, perhaps not caring, 
 what they had done. 
 
 The deep, blue river gave no sign of the tragedy 
 now. All was as still as the tomb. I stole close 
 and slowly along the bank. I felt a desolation that 
 was new and dreadful in its awful solemnity. The 
 bluff of the river hung in basaltic columns a thou 
 sand feet above my head ; only a narrow little strip 
 of grass and tules, and reeds and willows, nodding, 
 dipping, dripping, in the swift, strong river. 
 
 Not a bird flew over, not a cricket called from 
 out the long grass. " Ah, what an ending is this! " 
 I said, and sat down in despair. My eyes were 
 riveted on the river. Up and down on the other 
 side, everywhere I scanned with Indian eyes for 
 even a sign of life, for friend or foe. Nothing but 
 
250 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 the bubble and gurgle of the waters, the nodding, 
 dipping, dripping of the reeds, the willows and the 
 tules. 
 
 If earth has any place more solemn, more soli 
 tary, more awful, than the banks of a strong, deep 
 river, rushing, at nightfall, through a mountain for 
 est, where even the birds have forgotten to sing, or 
 the katydid to call from the grass, I know not where 
 it is. 
 
 I stole further up the bank ; and there, almost at 
 my feet, a little face was lifted, as if rising from the 
 water into mine. 
 
 Blood was flowing from her mouth, and she could 
 not speak. Her naked arms were reached out and 
 holding on to the grassy bank, but she could not 
 draw her body from the water. I put my arms 
 about her, and, with sudden and singular strength, 
 lifted her up and back to some warm, dry rocks, 
 and there sat down with the dying girl in my arms. 
 
 Her robe had floated away in the flood, and she 
 was nearly naked. She was bleeding from many 
 wounds. Her whole body seemed to be covered 
 with blood as I drew her from the water. Blood 
 spreads with water over a warm body in streams 
 and seams ; and at such a time a body seems to be 
 covered with a sheet of crimson. 
 
THE DEATH OF PAQUITA. 2$ I 
 
 Paquita ! 
 
 I entreated her to speak. I called to her, but she 
 could not answer. The desolation and solitude 
 was now only the more dreadful. My voice came 
 back in strange echoes from the basalt bluffs, and 
 that was all the answer I ever had. 
 
 Blood on my hands, blood on my clothes, and 
 blood on the grass and stones. 
 
 The lonely night was soft and sultry. The 
 great white moon rose up and rolled along the 
 heavens, and sifted through the boughs that lifted 
 above and reached from the hanging cliff, and fell 
 in lines and spangles across the face and form of 
 my dead. 
 
 Paquita! 
 
 Once so alone in the awful presence of death, I 
 became terrified. My heart and soul were strung 
 to such a tension, it became intolerable. I bent 
 my head, and tried to hide my face. 
 
 Paquita dead ! 
 
 Our lives had first run together in currents of 
 blood on the snow, in persecution and ruin, in the 
 shadows and in the desolation of death ; and so 
 now they separated forever. 
 
 Paquita dead ! 
 
 We had starved together ; stood by the sounding 
 
252 MY OWN STORY. 
 
 cataracts, threaded the forests, roamed by the river- 
 banks together ; grown from childhood, as it were, 
 together. But now she had gone away, crossed 
 the dark and mystic river alone, and left me to 
 make the rest of the journey with strangers and 
 without a friend. 
 
 Paquita ! 
 
 Why, we had watched the greatsun land, like some 
 mighty navigator sailing the blue seas of heaven, 
 on^the flashing summit of Shasta; had seen him come 
 with lifted sword and shield, and take possession of 
 the continent of darkness ; had watched him in the 
 twilight marshal his forces there for the last great 
 struggle with the shadows, creeping like evil spirits 
 through the woods, and, like the red man, make a 
 last grand battle there for his old dominions. We 
 had seen him fall and die at last with all the snow- 
 peak crimsoned in his blood. 
 
 No more now. Paquita, the child of nature, the 
 sunbeam of the forest, the star that had seen so 
 little of light, lay wrapped in darkness. 
 
 That night my life widened and widened away 
 till it touched and took in the shores of death. 
 
 Tenderly at last I laid her down, and gathered 
 fallen branches, decayed wood, and dry, dead 
 reeds, and built a ready pyre. 
 
THE DEATH OF PAQUITA. 253 
 
 I struck flints together, made a fire, and, when the 
 surf of light again broke in across the eastern wall, 
 I lifted her up, laid her tenderly on the pile, com 
 posed her face, and laid her little hands across her 
 breast. 
 
 I lighted the grass and tules. The fire took hold, 
 and leaped and laughed, and crackled, and reached 
 as if to touch the solemn boughs that bent and 
 waved from the cliffs above, as bending and look 
 ing into a grave. I gathered white stones and laid 
 a circle around the embers, and, while doing this, I 
 discovered a canoe in the tules, which soon bore me 
 away in safety. 
 
 How rank and tall the grass is growing above her 
 ashes now! The stones have settled and settled 
 till almost sunk in the earth, but this girl is not 
 forgotten. This is the monument I raise above her 
 ashes and her faithful life. I have written this 
 that she shall be remembered, and this narrative 
 should here have an end. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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