THE GOLD TRAIL
We loaded our pack-horses, and set off next morning early on the trail
up the American River. At last, it seemed to us, we were really under
way; as though our long journeyings and many experiences had been but a
preparation for this start. Our spirits were high, and we laughed and
joked and sang extravagantly. Even Yank woke up and acted like a frisky
colt. Such early wayfarers as we met, we hailed with shouts and
chaffing; nor were we in the least abashed by an occasional surly
response, or the not infrequent attempts to discourage our hopes. For
when one man said there was no gold, another was as confident that the
diggings were not even scratched.
The morning was a very fine one; a little chilly, with a thin white mist
hanging low along the ground. This the sun soon dissipated. The birds
sang everywhere. We trudged along the dusty road merrily.
Every little while we stopped to readjust the burdens to our animals. A
mountaineer had showed us how to lash them on, but our skill at that
sort of thing was _miner's_, and the packs would not hold. We had
to do them one at a time, using the packed animal as a pattern from
which to copy the hitch on the other. In this painful manner we learned
the Squaw Hitch, which, for a long time, was to be the extent of our
knowledge. However, we got on well enough, and mounted steadily by the
turns and twists of an awful road, following the general course of the
river below us.
On the hills grew high brush, some of it very beautiful. The buckthorn,
for example, was just coming out; and the dogwood, and the mountain
laurel. At first these clumps of bush were few and scattered; and the
surface of the hills, carpeted with short grass, rolled gently away, or
broke in stone dikes and outcrops. Then later, as we mounted, they drew
together until they covered the mountainsides completely, save where
oaks and madrone kept clear some space for themselves. After a time we
began to see a scrubby long-needled pine thrusting its head here and
there above the undergrowth. That was as far as we got that day. In the
hollow of a ravine we found a tiny rill of water, and there we camped.
Johnny offered some slight objections at first. It was only two o'clock
of the afternoon, the trees were scrubby, the soil dusty, the place
generally uncomfortable. But Yank shook his head.
"If we knew how they played this game, it might be all right to go
ahead. But we don't," said he. "I've been noticing this trail pretty
close; and I ain't seen much water except in the river; and that's an
awful ways down. Maybe we'll find some water over the next hill, and
maybe we won't. But we _know_ there's water here. Then there's the
question of hoss thieves. McClellan strikes me as a man to be believed.
I don't know how they act; but you bet no hoss thief gets off with my
hoss and me watchin'. But at night it's different, I don't know how they
do things. But I _do_ know that if we tie our hosses next us, they
won't be stolen. And that's what I aim to do. But if we do that, we got
to give them a chance to eat, hain't we? So we'll let them feed the rest
of the afternoon, and we'll tie em up to-night."
This was much talk for Yank. In fact, the only time that taciturn
individual ever would open up was in explanation of or argument about
some expedient of wilderness life or travel. It sounded entirely
logical. So we made camp.
Yank turned the two horses out into a grass meadow, and sat, his back
against an oak tree, smoking his pipe and watching them. Johnny and I
unrolled the beds, sorted out the simple cooking utensils, and started
to cook. Occasional travellers on the road just above us shouted out
friendly greetings. They were a miscellaneous lot. Most were headed
toward the mountains. These journeyed in various ways. Some walked afoot
and unencumbered, some carried apparently all their belongings on their
backs, one outfit comprising three men had three saddle horses and four
packs--a princely caravan. One of the _cargadores'_ pack-trains
went up the road enveloped in a thick cloud of dust--twenty or thirty
pack-mules and four men on horseback herding them forward. A white mare,
unharnessed save for a clanging bell, led the way; and all the mules
followed her slavishly, the nose of one touching the tail of the other,
as is the mule's besotted fashion. They were gay little animals, with
silver buttons on their harness, and yellow sheepskin linings to their
saddles. They carried a great variety of all sorts of things; and at the
freighting rates quoted to us must have made money for their owners.
Their drivers were a picturesque quartette in sombreros, wide sashes,
and flowing garments. They sat their animals with a graceful careless
ease beautiful to behold.
Near sundown two horsemen turned off the trail and rode down to our
little trickle of water. When they drew near we recognized in one of
them Don Gaspar Martinez. He wore still his gorgeous apparel of the day
before, with only the addition of a pair of heavy silver ornamented
spurs on his heels, and a brace of pistols in his sash. His horse, a
magnificent chestnut, was harnessed in equal gorgeousness, with silvered
broad bit, silver chains jangling therefrom, a plaited rawhide bridle
and reins, a carved leather, high-pommelled saddle, also silver
ornamented, and a bright coloured, woven saddle blanket beneath. The
animal stepped daintily and proudly, lifting his little feet and
planting them among the stones as though fastidiously. The man who rode
with Don Gaspar was evidently of a lower class. He was, however, a
straight handsome young fellow enough, with a dark clear complexion, a
small moustache, and a pleasant smile. His dress and accoutrements were
on the same general order as those of Don Gaspar, but of quieter colour
and more serviceable material. His horse, however, was of the same
high-bred type. A third animal followed, unled, packed with two cowhide
boxes.
The Spaniard rode up to us and saluted courteously; then his eye lit
with recognition.
"Ah," said he, "the good friends of our Capitan Sutter! This is to be
well met. If it is not too much I would beg the favour of to camp."
"By all means, Don Gaspar," said Johnny rising. "The pleasure is of
course our own."
Again saluting us, Don Gaspar and his companion withdrew a short
distance up the little meadow. There the Spaniard sat down beneath a
bush and proceeded to smoke a cigaretto, while his companion unsaddled
the horses, turned them loose to graze, stacked up their saddles, and
made simple camping arrangements.
"Old Plush Pants doesn't intend to do any work if he catches sight of it
first," observed Johnny.
"Probably the other man is a servant?" I suggested.
"More likely a sort of dependent," amended Johnny. "They run a kind of
patriarchal establishment, I've been told."
"Don't use them big words, Johnny," complained Yank, coming up with the
horses.
"I meant they make the poor relations and kid brothers do the hustling,"
said Johnny.
"Now I understand you," said Yank. "I wish I could see what _they_
do with their hosses nights. I bet they know how. And if I was a hoss
thief, I'd surely take a long chance for that chestnut gelding."
"You might wander over later and find out," I suggested.
"And get my system full of lead--sure," said Yank.
The two camps did not exchange visits. We caught the flicker of their
little fire; but we were really too tired to be curious, and we turned
in early, our two animals tied fast to small trees at our feet.
The next day lifted us into the mountains. Big green peaks across which
hung a bluish haze showed themselves between the hills. The latter were
more precipitous; and the brush had now given way to pines of better
size and quality than those seen lower down. The river foamed over
rapids or ran darkling in pools and stretches. Along the roadside,
rarely, we came upon rough-looking log cabins, or shacks of canvas, or
tents. The owners were not at home. We thought them miners; but in the
light of subsequent knowledge I believe that unlikely--the diggings were
farther in.
We came upon the diggings quite suddenly. The trail ran around the
corner of a hill; and there they were below us! In the wide, dry stream
bottom perhaps fifty men were working busily, like a lot of ants. Some
were picking away at the surface of the ground, others had dug
themselves down waist deep, and stooped and rose like legless bodies.
Others had disappeared below ground, and showed occasionally only as
shovel blades. From so far above the scene was very lively and animated,
for each was working like a beaver, and the red shirts made gay little
spots of colour. On the hillside clung a few white tents and log cabins;
but the main town itself, we later discovered, as well as the larger
diggings, lay around the bend and upstream.
We looked all about us for some path leading down to the river, but
could find none; so perforce we had to continue on along the trail. Thus
we entered the camp of Hangman's Gulch; for if it had been otherwise I
am sure we would have located promptly where we had seen those
red-shirted men.
The camp consisted merely of a closer-knit group of tents, log shacks,
and a few larger buildings constructed of a queer combination of heavy
hewn timbers and canvas. We saw nobody at all, though in some of the
larger buildings we heard signs of life. However, we did not wait to
investigate the wonders of Hangman's Gulch, but drove our animals along
the one street, looking for the trail that should lead us back to the
diggings. We missed it, somehow, but struck into a beaten path that took
us upstream. This we followed a few hundred yards. It proceeded along a
rough, boulder-strewn river-bed, around a point of rough, jagged rocks,
and out to a very wide gravelly flat through which the river had made
itself a narrow channel. The flat swarmed with men, all of them busy,
and very silent.
Leading our pack-horses we approached the nearest pair of these men, and
stood watching them curiously. One held a coarse screen of willow which
he shook continuously above a common cooking-pot, while the other slowly
shovelled earth over this sieve. When the two pots, which with the
shovel seemed to be all the tools these men possessed, had been half
filled thus with the fine earth, the men carried them to the river. We
followed. The miners carefully submerged the pots, and commenced to stir
their contents with their doubled fists. The light earth muddied the
water, floated upward, and then flowed slowly over the rim of the pots
and down the current. After a few minutes of this, they lifted the pots
carefully, drained off the water, and started back.
"May we look?" ventured Johnny.
The taller man glanced at us, and our pack-horses, and nodded. This was
the first time he had troubled to take a good look at us. The bottom of
the pot was covered with fine black sand in which we caught the gleam
and sparkle of something yellow.
"Is that gold?" I asked, awed.
"That's gold," the man repeated, his rather saturnine features lighting
up with a grin. Then seeing our interest, he unbent a trifle. "We dry
the sand, and then blow it away," he explained; and strode back to where
his companion was impatiently waiting.
We stumbled on over the rocks and debris. There were probably something
near a hundred men at work in the gulch. We soon observed that the pot
method was considered a very crude and simple way of getting out the
gold. Most of the men carried iron pans full of the earth to the
waterside, where, after submerging until the lighter earth had floated
off, they slopped the remainder over the side with a peculiar twisting,
whirling motion, leaving at last only the black sand--and the gold!
These pan miners were in the great majority. But one group of four men
was doing business on a larger scale. They had constructed what looked
like a very shallow baby-cradle on rockers into which they poured their
earth and water. By rocking the cradle violently but steadily, they
spilled the mud over the sides. Cleats had been nailed in the bottom to
catch the black sand.
We wandered about here and there, looking with all our eyes. The miners
were very busy and silent, but quite friendly, and allowed us to examine
as much as we pleased the results of their operations. In the pots and
cradles the yellow flake gold glittered plainly, contrasting with the
black sand. In the pans, however, the residue spread out fan-shaped
along the angle between the bottom and the side, and at the apex the
gold lay heavy and beautiful all by itself. The men were generally
bearded, tanned with working in this blinding sun, and plastered
liberally with the red earth. We saw some queer sights, however; as when
we came across a jolly pair dressed in what were the remains of
ultra-fashionable garments up to and including plug hats! At one side
working some distance from the stream were small groups of native
Californians or Mexicans. They did not trouble to carry the earth all
the way to the river; but, after screening it roughly, tossed it into
the air above a canvas, thus winnowing out the heavier pay dirt. I
thought this must be very disagreeable.
As we wandered about here and there among all these men so busily
engaged, and with our own eyes saw pan after pan show gold, actual
metallic guaranteed gold, such as rings and watches and money are made
of, a growing excitement possessed us, the excitement of a small boy
with a new and untried gun. We wanted to get at it ourselves. Only we
did not know how.
Finally Yank approached one of the busy miners.
"Stranger," said he, "we're new to this. Maybe you can tell us where we
can dig a little of this gold ourselves."
The man straightened his back, to exhibit a roving humorous blue eye,
with which he examined Yank from top to toe.
"If," said he, "it wasn't for that eighteen-foot cannon you carry over
your left arm, and a cold gray pair of eyes you carry in your head, I'd
direct you up the sidehill yonder, and watch you sweat. As it is, you
can work anywhere anybody else isn't working. Start in!"
"Can we dig right next to you, then?" asked Yank, nodding at an unbroken
piece of ground just upstream.
The miner clambered carefully out of his waist-deep trench, searched his
pockets, produced a pipe and tobacco. After lighting this he made Yank a
low bow.
"Thanks for the compliment; but I warn you, this claim of mine is not
very rich. I'm thinking of trying somewhere else."
"Don't you get any gold?"
"Oh, a few ounces a day."
"That suits me for a beginning," said Yank decidedly. "Come on, boys!"
The miner hopped back into his hole, only to stick his head out again
for the purpose of telling us:
"Mind you keep fifteen feet away!"
With eager hands we slipped a pick and shovels from beneath the pack
ropes, undid our iron bucket, and without further delay commenced
feverishly to dig.
Johnny held the pail, while Yank and I vied with each other in being the
first to get our shovelfuls into that receptacle. As a consequence we
nearly swamped the pail first off, and had to pour some of the earth out
again. Then we all three ran down to the river and took turns stirring
that mud pie beneath the gently flowing waters in the manner of the "pot
panners" we had first watched. After a good deal of trouble we found
ourselves possessed of a thick layer of rocks and coarse pebbles.
"We forgot to screen it," I pointed out.
"We haven't any screen," said Johnny.
"Let's pick 'em out by hand?" suggested Yank.
We did so. The process emptied the pail. Each of us insisted on
examining closely; but none of us succeeded in creating out of our
desires any of that alluring black sand.
"I suppose we can't expect to get colour every time?" observed Johnny
disappointedly. "Let's try her again."
We tried her again: and yet again; and then some more; but always with
the same result. Our hands became puffed and wrinkled with constant
immersion in the water, and began to feel sore from the continual
stirring of the rubble.
"Something wrong," grunted Johnny into the abysmal silence in which we
had been carrying on our work.
"We can't expect it every time," I reminded him.
"All the others seem to."
"Well, maybe we've struck a blank place; let's try somewhere else,"
suggested Yank.
Johnny went over to speak to our neighbour, who was engaged in tossing
out shovelfuls of earth from an excavation into which he had nearly
disappeared. At Johnny's hail, he straightened his back, so that his
head bobbed out of the hole like a prairie dog.
"No, it doesn't matter where you dig," he answered Johnny's question.
"The pay dirt is everywhere."
So we moved on a few hundred feet, picked another unoccupied patch, and
resumed our efforts. No greater success rewarded us here.
"I believe maybe we ought to go deeper," surmised Yank.
"Some of these fellows are taking their dirt right off top of the
ground," objected Johnny.
However, we unlimbered the pickaxe and went deeper; to the extent of two
feet or more. It was good hard work, especially as we were all soft for
it. The sun poured down on our backs with burning intensity; our hands
blistered; and the round rocks and half-cemented rubble that made the
bar were not the easiest things in the world to remove. However, we kept
at it. Yank and I, having in times past been more or less accustomed to
this sort of thing, got off much easier than did poor Johnny. About two
feet down we came to a mixed coarse sand and stones, a little finer than
the top dirt. This seemed to us promising, so we resumed our washing
operations. They bore the same results as had the first; which was just
the whole of nothing.
"We've got to hit it somewhere," said Johnny between his teeth. "Let's
try another place."
We scrambled rather wearily, but with a dogged determination, out of our
shallow hole. Our blue-eyed, long-bearded friend was sitting on a
convenient boulder near at hand, his pipe between his teeth, watching
our operations.
"Got any tobacco, boys?" he inquired genially. "Smoked my last until
to-night, unless you'll lend."
Yank produced a plug, from which the stranger shaved some parings.
"Struck the dirt?" he inquired. "No, I see you haven't." He stretched
himself and arose. "You aren't washing this stuff!" he cried in
amazement, as his eye took in fully what we were about.
Then we learned what we might have known before--but how should
we?--that the gold was not to be found in any and every sort of loose
earth that might happen to be lying about, but only in either a sort of
blue clay or a pulverized granite. Sometimes this "pay dirt" would be
found atop the ground. Again, the miner had to dig for it.
"All the surface diggings are taken up," our friend told us. "So now you
have to dig deep. It's about four feet down where I'm working. It'll
probably be deeper up here. You'd better move back where you were."
Yank, stretched himself upright.
"Look here," he said decidedly; "let's get a little sense into
ourselves. Here's our pore old hosses standing with their packs on, and
we no place to stay, and no dinner; and we're scratchin' away at this
bar like a lot of fool hens. There's other days comin'."
Johnny and I agreed with the common sense of the thing, but reluctantly.
Now that we knew how, our enthusiasm surged up again. We wanted to get
at it. The stranger's eyes twinkled sympathetically.
"Here, boys," said he, "I know just how you feel. Come with me."
He snatched up our bucket and strode back to his own claim, where he
filled the receptacle with some of the earth he had thrown out.
"Go pan that," he advised us kindly.
We raced to the water, and once more stirred about the heavy contents of
the pail until they had floated off with the water. In the bottom lay a
fine black residue; and in that residue glittered the tiny yellow
particles. We had actually panned our first gold!
Our friend examined it critically.
"That's about a twelve-cent pan," he adjudged it.
Somehow, in a vague way, we had unreasonably expected millions at a
twist of the wrist; and the words, "twelve cents," had a rankly
penurious sound to us. However, the miner patiently explained that a
twelve-cent pan was a very good one; and indubitably it was real gold.
Yank, being older and less excitable, had not accompanied us to the
waterside.
"Well, boys," he drawled, "that twelve cents is highly satisfactory, of
course; but in the meantime we've lost about six hundred dollars' worth
of hoss and grub."
Surely enough, our animals had tired of waiting for us, and had moved
out packs and all. We hastily shouldered our implements.
"Don't you want to keep this claim next me?" inquired our acquaintance.
We stopped.
"Surely!" I replied. "But how do we do it?"
"Just leave your pick and shovel in the hole."
"Won't some one steal them?"
"No."
"What's to prevent?" I asked a little skeptically.
"Miners' law," he replied.
We almost immediately got trace of our strayed animals, as a number of
men had seen them going upstream. In fact we had no difficulty whatever
in finding them for they had simply followed up the rough stream-bed
between the canon walls until it had opened up to a gentler slope and a
hanging garden of grass and flowers. Here they had turned aside and were
feeding. We caught them, and were just heading them back, when Yank
stopped short.
"What's the matter with this here?" he inquired. "Here's feed, and water
near, and it ain't so very far back to the diggings."
We looked about us, for the first time with seeing eyes. The little
up-sloping meadow was blue and dull red with flowers; below us the
stream brawled foam flecked among black rocks; the high hills rose up to
meet the sky, and at our backs across the way the pines stood thick
serried. Far up in the blue heavens some birds were circling slowly.
Somehow the leisurely swing of these unhasting birds struck from us the
feverish hurry that had lately filled our souls. We drew deep breaths;
and for the first time the great peace and majesty of these California
mountains cooled our spirits.
"I think it's a bully place, Yank," said Johnny soberly, "and that
little bench up above us looks flat."
We clambered across the slant of the flower-spangled meadow to the
bench, just within the fringe of the pines. It proved to be flat, and
from the edge of it down the hill seeped a little spring marked by the
feathery bracken. We entered a cool green place, peopled with shadows
and the rare, considered notes of soft-voiced birds. Just over our
threshold, as it were, was the sunlit, chirpy, buzzing, bright-coloured,
busy world. Overhead a wind of many voices hummed through the pine tops.
The golden sunlight flooded the mountains opposite, flashed from the
stream, lay languorous on the meadow. Long bars of it slanted through an
unguessed gap in the hills behind us to touch with magic the very tops
of the trees over our heads. The sheen of the precious metal was over
the land.