Produced by David A. Schwan
DOWN THE MOTHER LODE
PIONEER TALES OF CALIFORNIA
By Vivia Hemphill
Copyright, 1922
Foreword
So many inquiries have been made as to exactly where, and what is the
“Mother Lode”!
The geologist and the historian agree as to its location and
composition, but the old miners and “sojourners” of the vanished golden
era give strangely different versions of it. Some of these are here
set down, if not all for your enlightenment at least, I hope, for your
entertainment.
That is, after all, the principal aim of these tales of the old days in
California, that are gone “for good.” Mark Twain says in his preface
to “Roughing It” that there is a great deal of information in his work
which he regrets very much but which really could not be helped, as
“information seems to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar
of roses out of the otter”!
These stories make no such particular claim! They are merely historical
fragments of their everyday life, gathered from a passing generation
before they shall be finally lost. Each one is based upon truth.
Somewhere, sometime, some place, certain characters lived the scenes and
actions here described.
The title “Mother Lode” has been used in its broader sense as
exemplifying the source of all gold in California, and the life which
arose from it.
The mining engineer said: “The Mother Lode runs south from El Dorado
County to the lower boundary of Mariposa County. It stretches past the
towns of Sutter Creek, Jackson, San Andreas, Angel's Camp and the road
to Yosemite far down below Coulterville. The lode begins suddenly and
ends as suddenly, and though we have searched up and down the state we
have never been able to pick it up again.”
“Has it any relation to the Comstock Lode?” was asked.
“None whatever. Curiously enough, in Nevada City and vicinity it would
appear that at one time in the earth's making, a great fissure opened in
forming California and a wedge of Nevada mining country was pushed into
it. North of there the California stratas begin again.”
“But it was always my belief that these localities were on the Mother
Lode, as well as the Georgetown and Auburn country.”
“Many persons are apparently under that impression, but the geological
surveys of the government place it in the exact location I have given
you.”
The “Old Miner, '49er,” said: “We hunted most all o' our lives, lookin'
for her! We called her the Mother Lode, because we thought that all the
gold in the state must a' come from her an' washed down the rivers onto
the bars where we found it. We thought she'd be pure gold, an' a hundred
feet wide an' go on, world without end. We looked, an' looked, an' after
quartz minin' come in, we dug an' dug, but we never found the old girl
exceptin' here an' there.
“Joe Dance, that old prospector that died last year, he lost his mind
lookin' for the big lode. Made some rich strikes in his day, Joe did,
but he never could stop to work 'em. He was always waitin' for the
mother of 'em all, he said, who'd put him on the road to the heart a'
molten gold in the middle a' the earth.
“We old fellows tramped all the way through the hills with only a burro
for company most a' the time, an' you'll ride down a broad paved way,
soon, in your automobile. You'll go in days, where it took us months,
an' some brainy young engineer will locate the old girl, most likely, in
new-fangled ways that were unknown in our time.
“Well, the world whirls fast, now-a-days. Guess they'll need all the
gold in the old girl's lap to keep on greasin' the machinery. I take off
my hat to this generation. I hope they'll find it!”
Hittell says: “The Mother Lode is one of the most extraordinary
metalliferous veins in the world. Gold-bearing lodes usually range only
five or six miles, but this can be traced for more than sixty. The rock
is a hard and white quartz, rich in very fine particles of gold, and the
vein varies in width from a foot to thirty feet.
“There are in some portions of its course side branches or companion
veins, as they are sometimes called, making the total width nearly one
hundred feet. Nor is the direction of the lode always in a straight
line. Though usually found within half a mile of what may be considered
its normal course, it is sometimes found as far as two or three miles
from it, and there are cases of other lodes (three, in all) entirely
distinct, which in some instances approach so close as to be confounded
with it.”
There are numerous mines along the whole length of the lode, famous for
having yielded their millions. One quartz ledge is said to have yielded
for a long time, two-thirds gold. They say of the Morgan Mine, at
Carson's Creek near Melones, “It appeared to be rich beyond parallel.
On one occasion $110,000.00 worth of gold was thrown down at a single
blast.”
Many expeditions were made in search of the fabled Great Lode but all
attempts were vain.
'The old spread-eagle judge said: “Yes, sir; the Mother Lode dips up in
a bit of a circle with no beginning and no end, in the western foothills
of the Sierra Mountains. Down about Melones, and Sonora, and Angel's
Camp it goes, and through Table Mountain, and under Jackass Hill. It
comes north, and north, past Coloma, and Auburn, to Nevada City and then
it disappears.”
I remembered the engineer's statement, but was silent.
“It was the haunt of Harte, and Twain, and Canfield in the north; it was
the bank of such men as Hopkins, Crocker, Huntington and Stanford; the
foundation of one of the greatest states in the Union, the Mother Lode,
the Mother of Gold!”
“Child, my old eyes have watched it spread for nearly ninety years--the
power of gold, and of the men who came to seek it, The influence of gold
controlled by the human intellect. I am old and tired and soon I
shall sleep, but the old see clearly, too clearly, that which they are
leaving, and that to which they pass.”
“'Thus, facing the stars, we go out amongst them into darkness',” I
quoted, softly.
“Not to darkness, but to eternal light, to rise again from the Mother
Lode to mingle in the busy lives of men.”
“'Who maketh His messengers with two, and three, and four pairs of
wings'.”
“Exactly. To be born again, and yet again. The real mother-vein of gold
was imbued in the men shaped by the life of the frontier. It was
the cornerstone of great fortunes, of families, of enterprises, of
achievements which are peculiarly California's own.
“It was the clearing house and open sesame of the vast trade of the
Orient which is just coming into being; the foundation for the bridge
of gold which shall reach across the seas; a fit monument to posterity
which shall be erected with all the lightness and grace and stability
of the present cultured generations, born with their feet in the flowers
grown from the mother-gold of decent manhood and glorious womanhood--the
precious metals of the spirit, unalloyed and unafraid.
“They are the true Mother Lode, the bourne of the seekers of gold,
greater, far, than the crazed brains of the old prospectors had the
power to conceive. A further-reaching, broader arc than the most
wondrous rainbow of their imaginings born of dreams, and built of hunger
and despair.”
“So shall we find, at last, the Mother Lode, the virginity of the
essence of creation, the beginning and the end. The curve of the circle
which is unchanging, insoluble, omniscient; which shall return to that
which created it; which is all; which is God!”
“'49”
“We have worked our claims,
We have spent our gold,
Our barks are astrand on the bars;
We are battered and old,
Yet at night we behold
Outcroppings of gold in the stars.
Where the rabbits play,
Where the quail all day
Pipe on the chaparral hill;
A few more days,
And the last of us lays
His pick aside and is still.
We are wreck and stray,
We are cast away,
Poor battered old hulks and spars!
But we hope and pray,
On the judgment Day,
We shall strike it, up in the stars.
--Joaquin Miller.
Contents
One Sunday in Stinson's Bar
The Tom Bell Stronghold
The Hanging of Charlie Price
Rattlesnake Dick
Indian Vengeance
Grizzly Bob of Snake Gulch
Curley Coppers the Jack
The Race of the Shoestring Gamblers
The Dragon and the Tomahawk
The Barstow Lynching
One Sunday in Stinson's Bar
I
“On that broad stage of empire won,
Whose footlights were the setting sun;
Whose flats a distant background rose
In trackless peaks of endless snows;
Here genius bows, and talent waits
To copy that but One creates.”
--Bret Harte.
Now-a-days when you want to go from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada
country you step into your perfectly good Packard (or whatever it
is--all the way down to a motorcycle side car), and you ferry across
the bay and the straits, and if the motor-cop isn't around, you come
shooting up the highway forty miles an hour, and at the end of a
glorious five-hour run you are there.
In the early fifties--when there was less to see, too--you took more
time to it. You came to Sacramento on the river boat. Then if you
were rich, you bought a horse or a mule and rode for the rest of your
journey. If you were poor, or thrifty perhaps, you walked, or tried to
get a ride on one of the ox-freight teams which plied their way across
Haggin Grant to Auburn and Dutch Flat, or to Folsom and Coloma.
Later a railway was built as far as Auburn station, then situated at a
point three miles east of Loomis which was at that time called Pino.
Nothing remains of Auburn station. But the road bed of the old railway
is still to be found in certain wooded tracts which have not given way
to the fruit ranches; and the highway from Fair Oaks into Folsom follows
the old cuts and grades for several miles.
In the days preceding and immediately following the discovery of gold
in California, building was very difficult. Every stick of lumber in my
grandfather's house came by ship “around the Horn,” and the fruit trees
grape vines, flowers, even bees, for his lovely garden: were all sent
from Europe.
In the smaller settlements there was seldom more than one large building
which could be used for social purposes, and this was often the card
room or bar room in connection with the hotel of the town.
So here is the tale that was told of one Sunday in Stinson's bar room,
in the late '50s at Auburn Station:
They tried to give a ball once a year at Stinson's. Persons came to it
from 30 miles about, particularly if they were women, and every woman
divided each dance among four men. When a man invited a lady to come to
a dance, in many instances he insisted upon the privilege of buying her
a silken gown and slippers to wear, and this was not considered unusual,
nor was she in any way obligated to him for it. There were so few
“ladies” that they were treated as little short of divinities.
This Saturday night there had been no dance, and the men at Gentleman
Jack's table at Stinson's had played “three-card monte” on through the
dawn and the sunrise, and into broad daylight. The door was pushed open,
letting in a rush of cool, sweet air which guttered the candles set
in old bottles, and drove the heavy fog of tobacco smoke toward the
blackened ceiling. A voice boomed forth:
“Come on, now, gentlemen. Two ladies have come with posies in tall
silver vases and a white altar cloth for this table. The preacher's
coming over from Folsom, and there will be church held here in one hour.
He's a busy man today. An infant will be given a license to travel the
long and uncertain road to heaven, and a pair of happy lovers will be
made one.”
“One--unhappy pair.”
“It's William Duncan. He's intoxicated again,” drawled Gentleman Jack,
stretching his graceful length and smiling at a long, aristocratic
figure crouched over a small table in a corner. “His last strike turned
out to be only a small pocket, and so he drowns his woes in liquor, as
usual.” He bowed to his recent card partners. “Gentlemen, I am sincerely
sorry for your losses this night. I shall sleep an hour before the holy
man arrives.” He sauntered out, stuffing a buckskin bag of gold dust into
his pocket.
“There lies my pocket--in his pocket,” muttered Duncan. “No, Stinson”
raising his voice authoritatively, “I shall not go out. It is my
desire to pray for my sins today * * * and there has a letter come from
overseas which I must read--if I can. If I can--”
In an hour the room was cleared of smoke, greasy cards, poker chips
and empty bottles. The bar was in a small room apart. The poker table,
supplemented with a box, was covered with a handsome altar cloth flanked
by huge silver candlesticks and vases which had been carried across
the plains. Every individual in the community came to church and stayed
afterward for the christening. At least twenty men expressed a wish to
be god-father to the baby and the proud mother accepted all offers.
When the christening was over, William Duncan lurched to his feet, his
high-bred face full of tenderness, his long-fingered, fine grained hands
poised over the rosy child, while he quoted:
“May time who sheds his blight o'er all, And daily dooms some joy to
death. O'er thee let years so gently fall, They shall not crush one
flower beneath!”
“Ah, 'here comes the bride!' 'All the world's a stage!' Let us on with
the next scene,” and he reeled back to his little table in the corner.
The kissing and congratulations after the wedding were interrupted by
the shouts of a man on horseback, and riding hard.
“Where's the minister? Send for Doc Miller! That beast of a Mexican
horse thief--he' shot Jim Muldoon down at Dolton's Bar. Jim caught he's
stealing his horse and I'm afraid the dirty greaser's killed him. We got
'im, though, before he skipped. Somebody go down to Rattlesnake for Doc
Miller. They're bringing 'em both here.”
When Doc Miller saw Muldoon stretched on the barroom table, the same
table which a few minutes before had served as an altar he shook his
head.
“He will be gone in half an hour,” he said. The men standing about began
taking off their hats.
“I wish to write home,” whispered Muldoon. The young mother handed
her baby to its father and seizing pencil and paper, ran forward. The
minister opened his prayer book at the service for the dying.
When that service had been read, and what had been Muldoon carried away
to be made ready for the last sleep, only the minister and the tall
Englishman were left in the bar-room.
“In the midst of life we are in death,” muttered Duncan.
“True,” rebuked the other “so live well the life which the Lord, thy
God, hath provided thee.” Will Duncan laughed aloud.
“It is too late, Man-o'-God! There is no place in the world for a
younger son.” The minister had not heard. He sprang toward the open
window, calling:
“Wait! It is written--'Thou shalt not kill!' Bring him in, like just and
honest men, for a hearing. He may be a horse thief and a murderer but
you shall take the rope from his neck and he shall speak in his own
defense before he goes to his Maker.”
So a hearing was given (although grudgingly, and with audible grumbling)
by the friends of Muldoon across the table which had so lately been
his bier, but in the end they took the Mexican out for the short-cut to
retribution.
Two hours later, around the same table was solemnized the funeral
service of Jim Muldoon. The minister would not return for six weeks.
It must be held at once. Gentleman Jack gave a suit of finest black
broadcloth for a shroud, and the little bride, keeping one flower from
her wedding bouquet, placed the rest in the dead man's hands. She kissed
him softly on his forehead, whispering through her tears. “For the ones
at home who loved you,” and stood watching as six men carried him away
to the tiny cemetery under the trees on a hill.
Vesper services were over and the weary minister and his congregation
had gone before Duncan found courage to open and read his letter. His
elder brother, heir to the title and great houses and landed estates of
his family, had been killed in the hunting field and he, being next in
line, was to come home to succeed to the position.
He, William--Duncan--Claibourne--Earl of--but no, his family name had
never been told in California.
Portions of the services he had heard that day drifted through his mind:
“Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he
shall not enter therein. * * * We do sign him with the sign of the cross
in token hereafter that he shall manfully fight against the sin, the
world, and the devil; and to continue Christ's faithful soldier unto
his life's end.” So, the child starting on his earthly journey with the
minister's blessing and the backing of twenty god-fathers!
The holy old church service which he had heard at home in stately
English cathedrals--the nuggets in the contribution plate--the radiant
bride who had come across the plains to hear “Dearly Beloved, We are
gathered together,” standing beside the man she loved. The service for
the dying: “When we shall have served thee in our generation we may be
gathered unto our Fathers, having the testimony of a good conscience,
the confidence of a certain faith, in favor with Thee our God, and in
perfect charity with the world.” So, Jim Muldoon, cut down before his
time, and his slayer out there in the darkness on the end of a rope.
The dying candle picked out in flame a withered cabbage rose under the
table; a baby's mitten, the letter written for the man who had died, the
Mexican's sombrero on a chair, the gilt sun and moon and stars on the
glass face of the grandfather clock by the window.
Duncan's head fell forward in his clasped arms on the table, and in his
dreams he heard the huntsman's silver horn from across the seas calling
him home to carry on the destiny of the ancient and honorable name which
was his. His “strike of pay ore” in his “land of gold.”
The candle wick in a shallow pool of tallow flared high, and went out.
The old clock chimed twelve.
The Tom Bell Stronghold
II
“You smile, O poet, and what do you?
You lean from your window and watch life's column
Trampling and struggling through dust and dew,
Filled with its purposes grave and solemn;
An act, a gesture, a face--who knows?
And you pluck from your bosom the verse that grows,
And down it flies like my red, red rose,
And you sit and dream as away it goes,
And think that your duty is done--now, don't you?”
--Bret Harte.
In the early days it was called the Mountaineer House. Now it is
colloquially known as the “stone house,” and has for sixty years been
the home of the Owen King family. It is surrounded today by one of the
most beautiful orchards in the foothills. Wide verandahs of the native
gray granite to match the old house itself have been added. It is
electrically lighted and furnace heated, modern in every way, yet still
the romance of former times seems to cling to its sturdy old walls.
All that remain unchanged are three huge trees flanking the highway in
front. What tales they could tell, if they would, of what passed by the
junction of two roads beneath them. Of the long and weary caravans from
across the plains crawling up from the bridge at Whiskey Bar, below
Rattlesnake, glad that their six months' struggle was nearly over: of
horsemen on beautiful Spanish horses riding furiously, whither no one
knew nor dared ask; of dark deeds in the old stone house below, that
was so inscrutably quiet by day and so mysteriously alive by night; of
ghastly doings by the Tom Bell gang which ranged all the way from the
Oregon border to the southern lakes.
They will never tell all they know--these big old trees--of those
who went in by the door and “came out by the cellar” of Tom Bell's
stronghold. In the end the place fell, in the war between order and
lawlessness and, as the pessimists love to assert, a woman, as usual,
was the cause of it. The tale is told:
Rosa Phillips sat in the Mountaineer House strumming a Spanish guitar,
and singing,
“There's a turned down page, as some writer says, in every human life,
A hidden story of happier days, of peace amidst the strife.
A folded down leaf which the world knows not. A love dream rudely crushed,
The sight of a face that is not forgot. Although the voice be hushed.”
She rose and stood at a window, holding the dusty curtain aside with
one white hand and peering cautiously forth into the dusk. A horse was
galloping up the Folsom road. The horseman was near--was under the trees
in front--was past--and gone down the river road without slackening his
animal's rapid gait.
“He does not stop at the Mountaineer House these days,” said Tom Bell's
sneering voice at her elbow. “There is a new actress at the opera house
in Rattlesnake.”
The woman's dark eyes flashed, but she answered evenly enough:
“He does not stop, the handsome Dick, so you, senor, have not the cause
to be jealous. Is it not so?”
“Cause? Why, you Spanish jade, you've never been the same to me since
Rattlesnake Dick came prowling back from Shasta county to his old haunts
in Placer.” Rosa's thin, red lips curled.
“Senor, I am what it pleases me to be.”
“And Jack Phillips permits you to be!”
She shrugged her slender shoulders.
“He wearies me. Life--this place--wearies me.”
“Yes, and I weary you, too--now. Plain as day, it is.”
The Phillips woman smiled (she seldom laughed) and there was only
cruelty in her smile--no kindliness, no womanly softness of any sort.
“My friend, soon there will be no 'you.' The night is coming and there
will be no sunrise.”
A man dismounted at the gate and led his horse past the window to the
stables in the cellar. He walked with a curious, halting pace.
“There's Jim Driscoll back already. Must bring news,” said Bell, leaving
her hurriedly, and so neglecting to ask the meaning of her cryptic
remark.
Rosa slipped in behind the bar, late that evening, beautifully gowned,
and with her dark hair dressed high. Her vivid face glowed like a
scarlet poppy and was bright with smiles. Three or four men in the
crowded bar-room rose to their feet and drank to her bright eyes and
strolled across to the bar.
“Soon now,” she whispered, “I shall sweep out the lights. Those two
who have just entered--who are they?” She went across the room to the
newcomers. “The senors may pay me for the drinks, if they desire,” she
said to them, meaningly.
“La Rosita shall take what pleases her,” one of them laughed. Among
the handful of coins and small nuggets he brought from his pocket was a
bullet strung on a bit of dirty twine.
“Ah! a love token, senor?”
“Yes, from the throat of Betsy Jane” (a term often used for a rifle).
“In twenty minutes, my friends, there will be opened a chute into
purgatory for all who are in this bar room. Your 'love token' names you
Senor Bell's men. Before then you will seek the rear of the room--eh?”
She drifted away from them to pause at a small table where sat a young
man alone.
“And you, pretty fellow, you are new in California?”
“Yes, I landed in San Francisco only ten days ago.” He was new indeed,
or he would have realized the danger of telling his business to the
first person who asked.
“You go far, senor?”
“Not now. I have come far, but my journey is near to a very happy
ending.”
“So?”
“Yes. I have come to marry Miss Elena Ashley, at Auburn, to whom I have
been long betrothed.”
She tapped her white teeth with her fan.
“And yet you linger at Mountaineer House?”
“Horses are expensive, and I am not rich. I walked. I was tired. I saw
you in your garden, and you are very beautiful.”
Rosa's capricious vanity was touched. The whim seized her to save this
exuberant young bridegroom from the fate before him.
“Do you see that peddler--old Rosenthal--close to the bar? He brought in
a large and rich pack tonight. It lies in the next room. Do you go there
at once. I will come soon, and together we will select a gift for your
bride. Go quickly!”
She passed again behind the bar. Jack Phillips was at one end, lame
Jim Driscoll at the other, Tom Bell in the middle. Rosa paused near
a branching candelabra which had once graced the altar of a Spanish
church.
“Is Jose below?” whispered Bell. She nodded. “Why did you save that boy,
just now? A new lover?” She directed upon him a level glance of hate.
“I do what pleases me, senor.” She raised her arm high, beginning the
first stamping measure of a Spanish dance. Instantly there was a curious
rumbling noise in the stable underneath. Rosa swept over the candelabra.
All the lights in the place were struck out. Phillips and Driscoll
slipped two great bolts, and the entire bar-room floor swung downward on
hinges.
The chute to purgatory was open!
There was bedlam in that dank pass to the region of shades, and no
quarter was shown to any man; only cries of “The String! The String!”
from members of the gang in order to distinguish the robbers from the
robbed, in the darkness. There were curses, the kicking and squealing
of horses in their stalls; a verse from the Talmud recited in Yiddish
(which suddenly stopped), and above it all the high and hysterical laugh
of a woman.
The boy turned from the peddler's pack as Rosa entered the room. “What
is that horrible noise?”
“A fight. Come, you had better go.” She led him down a dark stair to
another section of the cellar. “Jose,” she called. An evil looking
Mexican pushed open a rough door. “You shall take this man out through
the second tunnel.”
“Si, senora.”
“And, Jose, he shall reach the outer opening alive, and with all his
belongings. He has no money. Do you hear?” Jose grunted. “Go, now,
under, cover of the noise.”
“But the gift for Elena!”
Rosa laughed mockingly. “What a child it is! My gift to Elena tonight,
is you--her lover. Ask her to thank me with a prayer from her pure heart
for my sins.”
Jose led the young man through a long, damp, evil-odored passage
underground, and out through a trapdoor at the extreme end of the
garden. A shrub grew on top of the door, surrounded by a bed of fragrant
wild pansies. Jose kicked the staring youth away from the entrance and
vanished into the earth looking, in the lantern-light like a malevolent
fiend returning to the realm of everlasting fire.
* * * * *
The balls which were given at the Franklin House on the old Pioneer road
were the most pretentious of the year. Feminine loveliness in silks
and cameos gathered from every section. General Sutter and his officers
sometimes were there, and the Spanish grandees brought to them the
lovely, star-eyed beauties of their households.
On this night a brilliant assemblage stood about in the ballroom floor
ready for a quadrille. Elena Ashley and her betrothed were near the wide
entrance doors.
“There is Sheriff Paul of Calaveras County,” she told him. “He does not
dance. I wonder what brings him here?”
The doors opened and Rosa Phillips entered, magnificently jewelled and
dressed in a rich silk of pearl grey. Elena stared, clutching at her
partner's arm.
“Oh, look!” she shrieked, “she is wearing my wedding dress. My wedding
dress which was stitched at the shop of Rosenthal the peddler, in
Sacramento, and which he was to bring me two weeks ago. I know it is
mine! There is the pearl passe-mentre on it that was my mother's. There
is none other like it in California!”
“So?” answered Rosa cooly, glancing down at the voluminous silken folds
of her robe. Then she stood waving her big fan, her large, dark eyes
roving across the throng.
“Mine Host” came quickly forward. “It is not permitted, senora, that
you--”
Rosa smiled cynically. “I, the silken hawk, came not to flutter your
nest of doves, senor. I came but for a little hour to meet a man
who--Ah, he is coming now. Sheriff Paul, I have that to tell you
which--”
The sheriff offered his arm ceremoniously and they passed out of the
ballroom. Tender hearted Elena was conscience stricken. She dropped her
lover's arm and darted after them through the big doors.
“Oh, I am sorry, I did not mean--please, Sheriff Paul, she may have the
dress, poor thing! But for her, I should have had no man to marry on my
wedding day next week.”
Sheriff Paul turned quickly. Elena, frightened, clapped two little hands
over her mouth. Rosa shrugged indifferently, and tipping back her small,
black head, listened to the music in the ballroom.
“Madam,” to Rosa, “you sent for me, making strange promises which, for
the safety of this community, I hope that you are now pleased to keep.”
Without lowering her chin she looked at him through sinister, narrowed
eyelids, and a smile of triumphant malice touched her face.
“Senor, I make no promises which I fail to keep,” she answered, “and
there is also a promise which I made Senor Tom Bell--”
* * * * *
“There is some one knocking at the cellar door,” said Tom Bell to
Phillips. “See who is there, and be careful that you let no one in
without the bullet and the password.”
“Tom, I'm afraid,” whined Driscoll “that Spanish devil's promised to
get you hung more than once lately, and last night I know she sent
that Mexican Jose of hers out somewhere with a string and bullet. I saw
them--”
“What! Why didn't you tell me before? Listen! Phillips is in trouble!
Go help him! Call the boys! Hurry!” As Jim Driscoll, with a halt in his
walk, left him, Tom Bell stole quietly to one of the tunnels and ran to
the trap-door which opened into an outhouse.
He found the corral full of saddle-horses and the Mountaineer House
completely surrounded by Sheriff Paul's, posse.
“Come on, boys,” said a voice.
“Did he get in?”
“Ye-ah--put his hand in with the bullet on a string, got his foot in the
door, gave the password and heaved the door wide open. Come on, now, and
there's orders not to take the woman, remember.”
Bell stole a rawboned roan from the corral and was far from the
frightful battle at Mountaineer House before he dared burst forth into
the vituperation which he heaped upon the name of Rosa Phillips.
* * * * *
Rosa sat strumming her guitar idly, and musing upon the events of the
past few months. Jack Phillips was serving a term in prison. Driscoll
had also been sent to the penitentiary. One day a rumor reached her that
he was threatening to turn state's evidence, and to divulge the truth in
regard to Rosenthal.
Three days later an iron bar was accidentally(?) dropped on his head;
through some mysterious agent he was given poison, and died. At the
memory of it Rosa smiled her enigmatic and implacable smile. Tom Bell
was at large somewhere far to the north and she--she was rich now and
she would go back to Monterey, perhaps. She drew her guitar closer and
sang:
“The far distant sound of a harp's soft strings--an echo on the air, The
hidden page may be full of sweet things, of things that once were fair.
There's a turned down page in each life, and mine--a story might unfold,
But the end was sad of the dream divine. It better rests untold.”
It was time for Harlan to arrive. Charlie Harlan, the man whom she
hoped to cajole into buying Mountaineer House. She strolled out into the
garden as Harlan rode up and tied his horse under one of the trees.
A happy pair passed. A delicate girl mounted upon a little mule and a
sturdy youth walking in the dust, his hand upon the beast's shoulder.
With their serene and joy-illumined faces they somehow suggested the
holy family, symbolical of all that was divine in a sordid world.
The girl smiled and waved to Rosa, but the young man doffed his hat
coldly and hastened by.
“The sweet little Elena,” said Rosa to herself, “and her lover-husband.
I wear the silken wedding gown which no lover sees, but she travels the
way in calico with the man she loves. May the Blessed Virgin grant that
she shall have no turned down pages in her life,” and forcing her proud
and bitter mouth into a provocative smile, she went forward to welcome
Harlan.
The Hanging of Charlie Price
III
“He goes to the well,
And he stands on the brink,
And stops for a spell
Jest to listen and think:
Let's see--well, that forty-foot grave wasn't his, sir,
that day, anyhow.”
--Bret Harte.
Everywhere in the foothills of the Sierras there are still evidences of
gold mining. High cliffs face the rivers, all that is left of hills torn
down at the point of the powerful hydraulic nozzles, with great heaps
of cobbles at their base which Mother Nature, even in seventy years has
been unable to change or cover.
At the mouth of nearly every ravine there are countless little mounds
which marked the end, or dump of the sluice-box in the placer mining.
When the mound got the proper height the sluice was simply lengthened,
like putting another joint onto a caterpillar--and there you were! The
sluice-boxes have long since been moved away or rotted to mould but
the little mounds remain, to be mansions for hustling colonies of small
black ants.
The country, in various localities, is pitted with prospect holes, and
the hills are pierced with drift tunnels and abandoned mines. Some of
the prospect holes are mere grassy cups, others are very deep and partly
filled with water.
Some of the most engrossing days of my childhood were spent in exploring
these places with my two boy companions. We would fell an oak sapling
across the mouth of the hole, tie a rope, usually my pony's lariat, to
the tree and slide down it to explore the depths below. If we came to
a side drift we would swing into it, light our candle-lanterns and
go looking for gold. We were always sure that we should yet find a
forgotten cache of gold--perhaps guarded by a lonely skeleton--but we
never did!
About all we ever got out of it was snake-frights (naturally, sans
alcoholic origin), until we were sure, the snakes were not rattlers;
baby bats, which invariably tried to bite us; swallows' eggs, wet feet,
and a good spanking if the family happened to find out what we had been
up to.
I suppose that it really was a very dangerous pastime, for although
sometimes the drift tunnel led us to a sunlit opening on the hillside,
more often we reached a blind end and were forced to return to the main
shaft and to “shin” up the rope, with from ten to forty feet of inky
water waiting to catch us if we fell.
Or we went up the river to “swing the rocker” for old Ali Quong. He
always pretended to drive us away, bellowing fiercely as soon as he
caught sight of us, “Whassa malla you? Alle time you come see Ali Quong!
Ketchem too-oo much tlouble for po-or old Chinaman”--the whole time with
his wrinkled, brown face wreathed in smiles.
There we stayed the long summer afternoon, swinging the rocker while
Quong shoveled in the pebbly dirt, watching him take the black sand,
which held the gold, off the canvas with his little spade-like scoop,
and panning it for him in the heavy iron pan, fascinated to see what
we should find. Usually only a few small nuggets in a group of colors
(flake gold), but once we found a good sized nugget which Quong
gallantly gave me for a “Chinese New Year” gift. At dusk he sent us
home, each with a bar of brown barley sugar--smelling to the blue of
opium--which he fished out of one of his numerous jumpers with his
long-fingered, sensitive hands.
They are dead, long ago--Ah Quong, old Sing, Shotgun-Chinaman--and gone
to the blessed region of the Five Immortals, I know, but every true
Californian will understand the regard the pioneer families had for
these faithful Chinese servitors who took as much loving pride in the
aristocratic and unblemished names of their “familees” as the white
persons who bore them. Four generations of my family, old Sing lived to
serve--but I must get on with my forty-niner's tale of the hanging of
Charlie Price!
“Eh, mon, but the spring is here again,” said Jim “Hutch” (Hutchinson)
to Old Man Greeley.
“Is it so, now?” returned the little man, gazing off through the sunny,
velvet air to a world which had been painted clean, new green. His
shrewd, blue eyes returned to the ponderous Scotchman.
“And how came you to realize that it was spring?” he asked maliciously.
“How came you to lick Sandy McArthur-r-r?” Hutchinson came back at him.
“Tell me that.”
“Well, but whisper, man,” said old Jimmie plaintively, “what else could
a man be after doin'? Me boots were on, an' I could not run away an'
climb a tree, so I used them on McArthur.”
“Ye're a wild fightin' Irishman with no regard for the Sabbath,”
returned Jim Hutch, sternly. Now Greeley had a fear of what the dour
old Scotchman might tell upon him. It would not pay to lose his Celtic
temper.
“It was to church I was goin'.” he growled. “'Twas why I was wearin' me
red-topped high boots.”
“Where was church that day, whatever? At the Widow Schmitt's?”
Jimmie squirmed. “You mentioned the beautiful spring, I mind,” he
countered deftly. Suddenly Jim Hutch grinned.
“I'll tell ye why. I was gaein' down frae Rattlesnake this afternoon an'
Charlie Price an' his Leezie were out in his bit garden a-plowin'. Mon,
ye could hear him for miles!”
It was even so. Old Charlie Price had decided that it was high time to
put in his vegetable garden. He went out to the lean-to in his corral
to inform Lizzie, the mare, of his intention. Lizzie was always the
unwilling partner of these agricultural peregrinations, and, now she saw
him approaching with the harness, she ran away with much snorting and
scattering of sod.
“Hey, you, Liz,” roared Charlie, “you goot-for-not'ing buckskin lummix,
you com mit!” He flourished the halter rope at her. Lizzie flattened her
ears, opened her mouth like a yawning snake, and ran at him. Old Charlie
let out a whoop that brought the sheriff from Rattlesnake at full speed,
and could be heard (so they say) all the way across the river to Wild
Goose Flat, six miles away.
Even Lizzie, accustomed as she was to Charlie's mannerisms, was frankly
startled and meekly allowed herself to be caught. She did not like to
plow. She was a saddler and a pair of tugs and a collar bored her. With
a cinch one could puff out in true wild-horse fashion while the latigo
strap was being pulled, and afterward be fairly comfortable, but a
slipping collar was neither off nor on. She shook herself impatiently
and the collar slid down her neck to her ears.
“Hey!” bellowed Charlie, “you don't vear it so! You--” The mare stamped
at a fly, bringing her hoof down on the old Dutchman's foot. His
blood-curdling whoops and yells brought the sheriff in on a brilliant
finale to a record-breaking run.
“What's the matter? Are you being murdered?”
“Who, I'm?” asked Charlie, absent-mindedly. He was nursing the injured
member, wondering whether to kick at Lizzie with it, knowing full well
that he stood a good chance of her kicking back again' but when she
snapped viciously at the puffing sheriff he decided against it.
“You com' to see me?” he asked, in a bland, so-glad-you've-called tone.
“To see you! Why, I've come to save your life!”
“So? Dot's goot, but Lizzie undt me, ve ain't got so much time today.
It's vegetables I sell in Rattlesnake undt ve go to plow, now.”
“Well, you old fool, after this you can call in vain if anything happens
to you. I'll never bother with you.”
“Oh, vell, ven I got a little excitement I got to yell about it, ain't
it?”
“Maybe you have--and after this you can, for all of me,” and the
wrathful sheriff departed. He was new in the community or he would have
known that the plowing of Charlie Price and Lizzie was a regular event
of each season, for which an audience gathered to lay bets for and
against the probability of his dying of apoplexy before it was finished.
The plowing progressed in this manner:
Charlie put the point of the plow in the soft earth and roared at the
motor-power. Lizzie started off at a nimble lope. The plow cut a pretty
curve and flew out of the ground. Charlie reefed the reins at once,
completely turning off the power. Then he put the reins about his neck,
grasped the handles of the plow with both hands, and zoomed commands
again at the champing power. “Power” jumped ahead. The reins nearly
snapped old Charlie's head off, but effectually brought the mare to a
standstill.
“Vait, you dunder-undt-blitzen apful peelings! You--you think dot
plowing is not high-toned enough, yet--hey? Vell, I show you!”
He picked up a huge clod of soft dirt held it aloft in both hands and
banged it down on Lizzie's back--whereupon she promptly ran away! She
galloped furiously to the end of the field with the plow banging in
scoops and leaps, and old Charlie, dangling on the end of the reins,
flying along in seven-league jumps behind her. As soon as he caught his
breath sufficiently for renewed directions, the cavalcade returned to
the grandstand and operations were repeated.
Charlie had been a sailor before he came to California, and he plowed
(?) each furrow with a collection of forceful admonitions, delivered in
a voice of thunder, from a different language. It was all the same to
Lizzie! She loathed plowing just as thoroughly in wildcat Spanish, as
she did in Dutch or Cingalese, and she did not hesitate to prove it.
Jim Hutch and Jimmie Greeley drifted down to Rattlesnake at sundown and
joined the laughter-weakened group perched upon Charlie's snake fence.
“The man grows more daft every year. 'Tis strange, what charms the Widow
Schmitt.” Old Jimmie merely growled in his beard. “Charlie, mon,” he
called, “the mare is warm and weary, and so's yoursel'. Come on to town
for a bit.”
Charlie stayed overlong at the miners' haunts in Rattlesnake and it was
very late when he started back to his cabin, carrying in one limp, hot
hand a jug which he guarded zealously from harm during his unsteady
progress.
The men still sat over the card tables when the first daylight crept
over the mountains. Jimmie Greeley was raking in a jackpot, grinning
fiendishly at the dour Jim Hutch when they heard heavy, running feet
outside. The door crashed open and a frightened, half-grown lad shouted:
“Where's the sheriff? Charlie Price has been hung!”
“What!”
“On a tree near the Widow Schmitt's. I saw him. I know well the sailor
coat that he wears--and his best red-topped boots. Where's the sheriff?”
“Over at Ah Quong's, the Chinee store on the edge of town.” The boy ran
off. Old Jim Hutch rose impressively to his feet.
“Friends, the man ye hae laughed at all day--is dead. The man ye hae
always laughed at--and yet, WHO was it that lent ye gold when ye had
none? Yea, the gold ye thought it not worth ye'r while to return. Who
was ever ready to warm you at his bit fire in winter or to cool ye're
whuskey-hot throat with water from his cool spring in summer?
“Who was it that brought his mare into his own kitchen when it snowed,
and fed her the rice and beans he went without? Who was it that the
Widow Schmitt waits for year after year, with half the ould fools in
Placer dancin' after her?”
That was too much for old man Greeley.
“Because he was indifferent-like. When ye want a woman, run away
f-r-r-om her and she'll run after.”
“Why did ye na do it, then, Jeems?”
“Faith an' I did, but bein' ahl dressed up as I was in me coat, she
couldn't see me suspenders to tell was I comin' or goin'!” Jim Hutch
turned from him witheringly.
“Who was it staked ye for a new prospectin' trip, an' let his own mine
go unworked? Who nursed ye when ye were lyin' seeck unto death, an'
no one would come nigh on account of the smallpox scare? Old Charlie
Price.”
A boy whirled about to face the window, but not before one
uncontrollable sob had sounded through the quiet room.
“Who was it,” went on the old Scotchman gently, “found the wee bairn
that was lost, last summer; that followed the Indians for thirty miles
on his Leezie-mare and got the babe from out the wickiup of White
Beaver? Charlie Price.
“Who came bringing it haeme laughing, on the saddle pommel while he sang
to it songs from ower seven seas, which we did blush to hear, in a
voice to be heard twa miles about? And 'twas only the bairn's mother who
thought to thank him.
“Yea, and furthermore, when the incensed people would hae wipet out the
while tribe of White Beaver, who dashed at the mob wi' the roars of a
bull-bison forcin' them to hear that the squaw was crazed from the death
of her own bit bairn, and but tryin' to comfort her sore heart? Who, I'm
askin' ye?” and from each man's lips came the murmur like a response to
a litany:
“Charlie Price.”
From the open door a cool dawn breeze blew in from the Sierras, pure
forerunner to the new day. It whirled the heavy smoke plumes into forms
of vanished ghosts, like the tortured figments of each man's conscience
who had done, and “left undone” that which it was forever too late to
amend.
The sheriff walked in.
“This boy says that old Charlie is gone.” He stood with his broad hat
off, running his fingers nervously through his hair. “Gentlemen--I--I
must confess--I heard the poor man calling, but--”
“Mon, in an ancient book named 'Mr. Aesop, His Fables,' there was a tale
of the lad who cried 'wolf.' Many there are here who have read it. Come,
let us gae after poor Charlie.”
In the first daylight they reached the tree with its gruesome burden.
“But--but,” sputtered the keen-eyed little Irishman, “'Tis not Charlie
at all! 'Tis but an effigy dressed in Charlie's clothes and hung at the
Widow Schmitt's gate.”
“As a warnin' to him frae some mutton-head lover of hers.”
They ran as one man across the road to Charlie's cabin. It was empty.
“He was callin' 'Help',” said the round-eyed boy.
“Yes, we heard him,” added the sheriff.
They had come up the road. They started back down the trail.
* * * * *
Charlie had got nearly home when he began to worry about a deep prospect
hole near the trail known as “Rosenhammer's Shaft.” He must be careful
to avoid it. Suddenly his foot slipped on a pebble. He clutched
unavailingly at a manzanita and rolled into a circle of inky blackness.
Rosenhammer's Shaft! Now he was lost, indeed.
But, no. As he slid he came against a sturdy live-oak bush which he
clutched, managing to stop his descent into the next world for the time
being. He even, swung one leg over a wiry limb, and there he clung,
puttering sailors' argot, considering his sins, and roaring for help in
his best fortissimo tone.
The shaft was said to be a hundred feet deep. It was filled part
way with oily water, and inhabited by snakes and monsters of the
subterranean deeps. People had fallen in and drowned, and had been known
never to rise again. The ghost of a Chinaman who had been murdered and
flung down, was said to float up from its depths at night to range the
earth, seeking the perpetrator of the fiendish deed.
Charlie wished that he had led a more blameless life that he had not so
thoroughly beaten the Indian who had sold him a salted mine; that he had
not made Lizzie plow; that, above all, he had married the Widow Schmitt
when she had so plainly shown her liking for him.
Well, it did not matter much. He would fall in forty feet of water and
they would never find him. He wished that he had drunk that which the
jug contained. It was growing daylight. What was the day, then, to him?
He would never live to see it. His arms were numb. He must soon let go
and fall to his doom.
He heard voices but was too spent to call out. As a crowd of men came
running over the hill, his arms were slipping--slipping. It was almost
broad day.
He made one last, herculean effort to hold fast, turning his head
over his shoulder to glance into the deathtrap below and--just as
his repentant rescuers reached him, he gave a disgusted snort and
fell--three feet to the bottom of the hole!
In the darkness he had safely passed the Rosenhammer shaft and had
fallen into the six-feet-deep prospect hole of his own claim.
Two days later, Charlie married the Widow Schmitt
“Rattlesnake Dick”
IV
“Again swings the lash on the high mountain trail,
And the pipe of the packer is scenting the gale;
For the trails are all open, the roads are all free,
And the highwayman's whistle is heard on the lea.”
--Bret Harte.
We were riding one day under the Digger pines, down an abandoned old
road toward Mountaineer House. As usual, my spirited half-Arab, as white
as she was fleet, had put me far in the lead. She loved a race as well
as I did, but she ran it to suit herself. If I tried to interpose any
theories of my own, she calmly took the bit in her teeth and after that
I devoted most of my energies to hanging on!
Mammy Kate, own daughter of Nancy Gooch of Coloma, would scold when I
came home with torn skirt and a bump on my forehead: “Now, den, look at
dat chile! Been hoss-racin' agin su'ah as Moses was in Egypt! I shall
suttenly enjine yo' fathah to done gin' yo' plow-hoss to ride so yo's
gwi' git beat wiff yo' racin', and quit. Spects yo' had 'nothah tumble,
didn't you'? You' wait till Katie gits de camph-fire an' put on dat
haid.”
So did Katie's scoldings invariably end in renewed pampering of her
“chile,” and so did I continue to race every horse in the community and
usually to win.