The End of the Trail
The gold that with the sunlight lies
In bursting heaps at dawn,
The silver spilling from the skies
At night to walk upon,
The diamonds gleaming in the dew
He never saw, he never knew.
He got some gold, dug from the mud,
Some silver, crushed from stones,
The gold was red with dead men's blood,
The silver black with groans;
And when he died he moaned aloud,
"There'll be no pocket in my shroud."
Joaquin Miller.
John Keeler, returned from his travels, became Palmer's trusted
messenger to Hintzen, to whom the old man sent a copy of his will.
Keeler was provided with another copy to deposit at the court-house in
Downieville, county seat of Sierra County. For although Robert Palmer
disliked courts and lawyers, he deemed it wise to file a copy of his
will at the court-house. This he could do without telling Hintzen, so he
instructed Keeler, after having seen that gentleman at Forest City, to
continue over the mountains to Downieville, as if on private business.
Honest John Keeler, after a year spent in tracking criminals, had little
liking for this new mission. It seemed as if his old friend thought all
men rogues. Such a sweeping condemnation would include himself, and he
resented the insinuation. However, the old man was still feeble. So
Keeler set out on foot across the mountains.
It had been some time since he had been as far as Chipp's Flat. There he
sought out the old cannon, long since dismounted, and sitting down upon
it he thought of the changes wrought in that neighborhood within his
recollection. In Civil War times, eighteen years before, miners of
Chipp's Flat and vicinity had enlisted in the Union Army. There had been
a full company of a hundred men, and the cannon had been a part of their
equipment. But the cannon had not left that California mountain-side;
and the soldiers themselves had got no further East than Arizona, for in
those days there was no transcontinental railroad. Now that there was
one, Chipp's Flat had no need of it. Save for two or three scattered
houses the mining town had disappeared. The mountain ridge had been
mined through from Minnesota, and now that the gold-bearing gravel had
been exhausted, Chipp's Flat, except in name, had gone out of existence.
The next thing of interest was the dirty blue water of Kanaka Creek, and
the clatter of the stamping mills on the other side of it; for Keeler
was not much used to quartz mining. The name "quartz mining" seemed
misleading, for the wash from the crushed rock was distinctly blue. It
was evident that these quartz mines were paying well, as Alleghany had
every appearance of a live mining town. Keeler stopped at the hotel
there for dinner. It seemed strange that intelligent men should so lose
their heads. Great quantities of liquor were being consumed at the hotel
bar, poker games were in full blast, and there was a cemetery handy.
Keeler was glad to leave Alleghany to climb over the mountain ridge to
Forest City. Now to the eastward the lofty peaks of the Sierras hove
into view, dwarfing the mountain ridges of the gold fields. He paused to
inspect the ancient stream of lava which crossed his path, and
considered once more those convulsions of the earth which had thrown the
ancient river beds to the hill-tops, and of which California earthquakes
are a constant reminder.
Arrived at the summit of the ridge, he looked down upon Forest City, a
straggling village in a barren valley denuded of forests. Church,
school, and cemetery gave the place an air of permanence; but some day
it might disappear, like Chipp's Flat. It lay almost beneath him, so
steep was the road down the mountain. Beyond, up the bare valley of a
mountain stream, lay the trail to Downieville, nine miles away. His
mission to Hintzen performed, he would spend the night at Forest City,
and push on to Downieville the next morning.
Hintzen kept the general store at Forest City, a business more certain
and profitable than gold-mining; and having a reputation for strict
honesty, he had become a sort of agent and business manager for the
miners. He was one of the few men Robert Palmer trusted; therefore he
received the document from Keeler's hand without surprise. But he could
not repress a smile at the testator's extreme caution and resolved
forthwith to ask for a list of his friend's securities.
"How is the old man now?" he asked.
"Mr. Palmer has had a close call," replied Keeler. "But he is good for a
couple of years yet, I reckon."
"Sit down, Keeler, while I write him a note. You'll find a whiskey toddy
up there at the end of the counter.--Beg your pardon. Forgot your
temperance principles. There's fresh spring water in that bucket."
Next morning Keeler pushed on up the ascending valley of the mountain
torrent. The horns of a wild sheep by the wayside reminded him of
earlier days when game was plentiful. The only wild creatures along the
trail to-day were rattlesnakes. With these he was well acquainted. But
it did give him a start to find one twined about a branch of a bush.
An hour's steady climbing brought him to the top of the watershed
between the North and the Middle Yuba. Here a scene of wild grandeur lay
before him. Bare crags on either hand guarded the pass over the divide.
Immediately in front lay a whole system of deep cañons, clothed with
primeval forests, wild and forbidding. Beyond towered a chain of rough,
bare mountain peaks. Keeler paused to wonder anew at the vastness of the
Sierras.
Then he plunged down from the ridge and was soon traversing one of the
most lonesome and gloomy trails in all the mountains. The tree trunks
were covered with yellowish green moss. In one place stood a pine stump
fifty feet high with the upper hundred feet of the tree thrust into the
earth beside it. At another place a huge log blocked the trail. Then he
crossed a brook and was among chaparral and manzanita bushes. Then he
was among the pines again, listening to their voices, for a breeze was
blowing up the cañon. Now he came to a spooky region which had been
swept by fire, with bare tree trunks, broken and going to decay,
standing like ghosts of the forest. Beyond was a clump of young firs
with gray stems, so straight and perfect as to be almost uncanny. Or was
it the traveler's overwrought imagination?
Now the trail turned at right angles along the steep side of a cañon,
and he heard the music of the mountain torrent far below. Half a mile
further on, where the trail crossed the brook at the head of the cañon,
it doubled back on itself along the other side. The traveler refreshed
himself at a mossy spring by the side of the trail, then, as he emerged
from the cañon at a sudden turn, Downieville appeared. It lay far below
him, at the forks of the North Yuba. How musically the roar of the river
came up through the autumn stillness! Sign boards pointing to the Ruby
Mine, and to the City of Six, prepare the traveler for the discovery of
some settlement in the wilderness. But he is hardly prepared for such a
beautiful and welcome sight. Here, tucked away among the mountains as
tidily as some Eastern village, lies the county seat of Sierra County.
But this is California and not Maryland, for yonder comes a mountaineer
up the trail with his pack horses.
Keeler lost no time in descending and transacting his business at the
court-house. But after his lonesome walk over the mountains something he
saw here appealed to his imagination. It was a human skull, which had
belonged to a murderer. The murdered man was a Frenchman, killed for his
money. This was Keeler's first visit to Downieville since the crime, and
as he had known the Frenchman he determined to visit his grave.
The cemetery is up the river beyond the edge of the town; and here, in
more senses than one, a traveler finds the end of the trail. Men and
women whose life journey had begun in New England, Old England, Wales,
Ireland, France, Denmark, or Russia, had here come to their journey's
end.
At the cemetery gate, fastened by a wire, was the quaint sign:
"NOTICE
PLEASE PUT THIS WIRE ON AGIN
TO KEEP IT SHUT."
A beautiful clear mountain stream flows along one side of the ground and
pours into the river below. A lone pine chants requiems over the dead;
and yellow poppies with red hearts spring out of the graves. Many of the
headstones are boards, naturally; and one poor fellow, whose estate at
death was probably a minus quantity, is commemorated by a strip of tin
with his name pricked into it. There is a fair proportion of pretentious
monuments, which were drawn by ten-horse teams from some distant
railroad station.
Marked by such a monument was the grave which Keeler sought. The
symbolism was striking,--a broken column, an angel holding out an olive
branch, and Father Time. And this was the verse of Scripture carved in
stone:
"Man walketh in a vain shadow:
he heapeth up riches and cannot
tell who shall gather them."
Forgetting the murdered Frenchman in the forcefulness of the text,
Keeler wondered if Robert Palmer's journey, too, would end like this.