Gold

"And where does it go to?" I supplemented.

"I reckon some of those plains people could tell you," surmised Yank shrewdly.

At two o"clock the downpour ceased as abruptly as though it had been turned off at a spigot. Inside of twenty minutes the clouds had broken, to show beyond them a dazzling blue sky. Intermittent flashes and bands of sunlight glittered on the wet trees and bushes or threw into relief the black bands of storm clouds near the horizon.

Immensely cheered, we threw aside our soggy blankets and sallied forth.

"Great Christmas!" cried Johnny, who was in the advance. "Talk about your mud!"

We did talk about it. It was the deepest, most tenacious, slipperiest, most adhesive mud any fiend ever imagined. We slid and floundered as though we had on skates; we acc.u.mulated b.a.l.l.s of it underfoot; and we sank disconcertingly half-leg deep at every third step. Our first intention had been to go up to town; but we soon revised that, and went down to the Morena cabin instead, with the idea of looking after the two horses. The beasts, very s.h.a.ggy underneath and plastered above, stood humped up nose to tail. We looked into the cabin. The roof had leaked like a sieve; and the interior was dripping in a thousand places.

"Reckon even the tent was better after all," acknowledged Yank, looking with disfavour on the muddy floor.

We returned to the tent and made shift to get a fire going. After cooking some hot food, we felt better, and set about drying our blankets. In the canon we could hear the river roaring away hollowly.

"I"ll bet she"s on the rampage!" said Old.

"I"ll bet she"s got my cradle and all of my tools!" I cried, struck with a sudden thought.

And then, about as we commenced to feel cheerful and contented again, the scattered black clouds began to close ranks. One by one the patches of blue sky narrowed and disappeared.

"Why!" cried Cal in astonishment, "I believe it"s getting ready to rain again!"

"Shucks!" replied Old, "It can"t. There ain"t no more rain."

Nevertheless there was, and plenty of it. We spent that second night shifting as little as possible so as not to touch a new cold place in our sodden blankets, while the waters roared down in almost a solid sheet.

This lasted the incredible period of four days! n.o.body then knew anything about measuring rainfall; but, judging by later experience, I should say we must have had close to seven inches. There was not much we could do, except to get wetter and wetter, although we made shift to double up at night, and to use the extra blankets thus released to make a sort of double roof. This helped some.

The morning of the fifth day broke dazzlingly clear. The sky looked burnished as a blue jewel; the sunlight glittered like shimmering metal; distant objects stood out plain-cut, without atmosphere. For the first time we felt encouraged to dare that awful mud, and so slopped over to town.

We found the place fairly drowned out. No one, in his first year, thought of building for the weather. Barnes"s hotel, the Empire and the Bella Union had come through without shipping a drop, for they had been erected by men with experience in the California climate; but almost everybody else had been leaked upon a-plenty. And the deep dust of the travel-worn overland road had turned into a mora.s.s beyond belief or description.

Our first intimation of a definite seasonal change came from our old friend Danny Randall, who hailed us at once when he saw us picking our way gingerly along the edge of the street. In answer to his summons we entered the Bella Union.

"I hope you boys weren"t quite drowned out," he greeted us. "You don"t look particularly careworn."

We exchanged the appropriate comments; then Danny came at once to business.

"Now I"m going to pay off you three boys," he told the express messengers, "and I want to know what you want. I can give you the dust, or I can give you an order on a San Francisco firm, just as you choose."

"Express business busted?" asked Johnny.

"It"s quit for the season," Danny Randall told him, "like everything else. In two weeks at most there won"t be a score of men left in Italian Bar." He observed our astonished incredulity, smiled, and continued: "You boys came from the East, where it rains and gets over it. But out here it doesn"t get over it. Have you been down to look at the river?

No? Well, you"d better take a look. There"ll be no more bar mining done there for a while. And what"s a mining camp without mining? Go talk to the men of "48. They"ll tell you. The season is over, boys, until next spring; and you may just as well make up your minds to hike out now as later. What are you laughing at?" he asked Johnny.

"I was just thinking of our big Vigilante organization," he chuckled.

"I suppose it"s true that mighty few of the same lot will ever get back to Italian Bar," agreed Danny, "but it"s a good thing for whatever community they may hit next year."

Johnny and Old elected to take their wages in dust; Cal decided on the order against the San Francisco firm. Then we wandered down to where we could overlook the bar itself.

The entire bed of the river was filled from rim to rim with a rolling brown flood. The bars, sand-spits, gravel-banks had all disappeared.

Whole trees bobbed and sank and raised skeleton arms or tangled roots as they were swept along by the current or caught back by the eddies; and underneath the roar of the waters we heard the dull rumbling and crunching of boulders rolled beneath the flood. A crowd of men was watching in idle curiosity. We learned that all the cradles and most of the tools had been lost; and heard rumours of cabins or camps located too low having been swept away.

That evening we held a very serious discussion of our prospects and plans. Yank announced himself as fit to travel, and ready to do so, provided he could have a horse; the express messengers were out of a job; I had lost all my tools, and was heartily tired of gold washing, even had conditions permitted me to continue. Beside which, we were all feeling quite rich and prosperous. We had not made enormous fortunes as we had confidently antic.i.p.ated when we left New York, but we were all possessed of good sums of money. Yank had the least, owing to the fact that he had been robbed of his Porcupine River product, and had been compelled for nearly three months to lie idle; but even he could count on a thousand dollars or so sent out from Hangman"s Gulch. I had the most, for my digging had paid me better than had Johnny"s express riding. But much of my share belonged of right to Talbot Ward.

Having once made up our minds to leave, we could not go too soon. A revulsion seized us. In two days the high winds that immediately sprang up from the west had dried the surface moisture. We said good-bye to all our friends--Danny Randall, Dr. Rankin, Barnes, and the few miners with whom we had become intimate. Danny was even then himself preparing to return to Sonoma as soon as the road should be open to wagons. Dr.

Rankin intended to accompany him, ostensibly because he saw a fine professional opening at Sonoma, in reality because in his shy, hidden fashion he loved Danny.

n.o.body objecting, we commandeered the two horses that had belonged to the Morenas. One of them we packed with our few effects, and turned the other over to Yank. Thus, trudging afoot, Johnny and I saw our last of Italian Bar. Thirty years later I rode up there out of sheer curiosity.

Most of the old cabins had fallen in. The Bella Union was a drear and draughty wreck. The Empire was used as a stable. Barnes"s place and Morton"s next door had burned down. Only three of the many houses were inhabited. In two of them dwelt old men, tending small gardens and orchards. I do not doubt they too were Forty-niners; but I did not stop.

The place was full of too many ghosts.

CHAPTER XLI

WE GO OUT

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

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

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

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

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

"_My claim failed!_"

And then below them:

"_Oh, Susannah! don"t you cry for me!

I"m a-living dead in Californi-ee_"-- which was very bad as doggerel, but probably very accurate as to its author"s state of mind.

One afternoon we turned off on a trail known to Old, and rode a few miles to where the Pine family had made its farm. We found the old man and his tall sons inhabiting a large two-roomed cabin situated on a flat. They had already surrounded a field with a fence made of split pickets and rails, and were working away with the tireless energy of the born axemen at enclosing still more. Their horses had been turned into ploughing; and from somewhere or other they had procured a c.o.c.k and a dozen hens. Of these they were inordinately proud, and they took great pains to herd them in every night away from wildcats and other beasts.

We stayed with them four days, and we had a fine time. Every man of them was keenly interested in the development of the valley and the discovery of its possibilities. We discussed apples, barley, peaches, apricots, ditches, irrigation, beans, hogs, and a hundred kindred topics, to Johnny"s vast disgust. I had been raised on a New England farm; Yank had experienced agricultural vicissitudes in the new country west of the Alleghanies; and the Pines had scratched the surface of the earth in many localities. But this was a new climate and a new soil to all of us; and we had nothing to guide us. The subject was fascinating. Johnny was frankly bored with it all, but managed to have a good time hunting for the game with which the country abounded.

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

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

"Why don"t you?" urged old man Pine. "There"s a flat just above us."

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