A Gold Hunter's Experience Part 3

About the first of June, Mr. Ayres came out to spend the summer. He was so delighted with the beauty of the scenery and novelty of the business that he talked of sending for his family. The mountain sides were gay with wild flowers in full bloom in gorgeous colors. The shining gold that he could see taken out by several successful plants, delighted his eyes and stimulated his imagination nearly up to the point of genuine gold fever. His coming was of course a great relief to me by dividing the responsibility and work about the mill. We ran the mill night and day, crushed all the quartz that could be got and worked over a large pile of tailings that had acc.u.mulated below the mill, which paid a small profit. The summer's success was very moderate. About midsummer Mr.

Ayres bought out my interest in the enterprise, with the understanding that I would remain till fall and a.s.sist him. He wanted to give the business a further trial. I determined to return to Chicago and try to take advantage of the tide of prosperity then beginning to rise in the East.

Mr. Ayres remained till late in the fall, then went to Chicago for the winter and returned to the mountains early in the spring of 1863, to give the business a further trial. But he did not do much mining or milling. During that spring and the following summer a fever of speculation prevailed all over the East, brought about by the war and the deluge of greenbacks. It extended to mining stocks, and especially to gold mines, as gold was then selling at a high premium--one hundred dollars in gold bringing $260 in legal tender currency. Mr. Ayres offered his plant for sale, went to New York in the summer and disposed of it in Wall street for $30,000. The mill was never afterwards run and I believe, none of the mines ever worked. Twenty years later I visited Leavenworth gulch. The mill and all the houses and cabins of my former days there had disappeared, and most of the old prospect holes and mining shafts had caved in. One familiar sight, however, remained. A load or so of black, rich looking ore was lying upon the ground unused and uncared for at the shaft of the Keystone.

On the 22nd of October, 1862, I left the mountains and gave up the mining business for ever. The next day at Denver I took pa.s.sage for Omaha, in a two-horse covered wagon, with a man and his wife who were returning to their home in Baraboo, Wis., after spending two years in the gold fields with only moderate success. Another man also took pa.s.sage making a party of four. Leaving the wagon to the man and his wife, my fellow pa.s.senger and I slept on the ground in our blankets, except occasionally, when near some ranch or settlement, we could enjoy the luxury of a haystack. When two or three days out of Denver we had a "cold snap" which froze the vegetables in the wagon and made sleeping out very uncomfortable. The woman did the cooking and the men collected the fuel. The other two men had guns and supplied us with small game. We saw a few dozen buffalo, but they were too far off to shoot. One day the two men went off on an all-day hunt among the distant hills, the arrangement being to meet us in camp at evening. I drove the team, and in the afternoon we came in sight of a camp of Indians with their lodges set up near our trail. The only thing to do was to drive boldly ahead.

The woman sat on a seat well back in the wagon, and I sat forward with my feet out on a front step. I hung up a blanket close behind me across the wagon, so that the Indians could not see how many persons were in it. As we approached the camp about a dozen of them came out on the trail in front of us, motioning to me to stop and calling out, "Swap, swap, swap," meaning for us to stop and trade with them, but intending doubtless to find out how many were in the wagon, and rob us if they dared. Suddenly, when within a few yards of them, I whipped the horses with all my might, and drove furiously past and away from the camp. When our party met at night, all agreed that the day's experience savored too much of danger to allow the hunters to go out of sight of the wagon again.

We pa.s.sed two or three camps of Sioux Indians along the Platte, but they gave us no trouble. When driving through the trees and bushes in a lonely spot about a day's journey below Fort Kearney, we suddenly met a band of mounted p.a.w.nee warriors, who stopped us and in broken English asked where we were going, where we came from, if we saw any Sioux Indians, how big the bands were, if they had many ponies and how many days' journey they were away. We answered their inquiries, and they told us to go ahead. They rode westward, doubtless to make a raid on their enemies, the Sioux.

The weather was now getting cold; we approached the settlements and enjoyed the haystacks. One night, while camping near an Indian settlement on the Platte, I crawled well into the middle of a small rick of hay. The Indians were tramping around it and over it and howling and yelling all night, but I kept my berth till morning. We reached Omaha in twenty days from Denver. There I said good-by to my traveling companions and took stage for Iowa City, whence I could go by rail to Chicago. The stage trip was two days and nights of continuous travel, except short stops to change horses and get something to eat. We were packed three on a seat, with no chance to stretch out our limbs, and no opportunity for sleep, except such as could be obtained sitting upright and jolting over the rough roads.

After an absence of about two and a third years, I reached Chicago in the middle of November, 1862, a wiser if not a richer man.

After selling out my interest in the joint enterprise, I still had left some fifty claims on various lodes in the newer gold fields of the Clear creek region. Some I had pre-empted, and some I had bought in job lots from miners who were "broke" or were about to leave the mountains. Some had prospect holes dug in them and some were entirely undeveloped. They may have been worthless, and they may have contained untold millions.

But I had given up the mining business. Some time after returning to Chicago I was making a real estate trade, and we were a little slow in adjusting the difference in values and closing the deal, and finally as "boot" to make things even I threw in these fifty gold mines. Perhaps this was a mistake and a squandering of wealth and opportunities. Had I only kept them, and gotten up some artistic deeds of conveyance, in gilded letters, what magnificent wedding presents they would have made.

And the supply would have been as exhaustless as that of Queen Victoria's India shawls. In the long list of high-sounding, useless presents, the present of a gold mine would have led all the rest.

In summing up the losses and gains of the expedition, I have to charge on one side two years and four months of time devoted to hard work, with many privations, and about $500 in cash which I was out of pocket. On the other side, I had built up a fine const.i.tution, increased in strength and endurance, gained valuable business experience, learned in a measure to persevere under difficulties, and to bear with patience and fort.i.tude the back-sets, reverses and disappointments that so often beset us, and, finally, had learned enough not to be taken in by the schemers who are constantly enticing eastern people to invest in gold and silver mines. Did the enterprise pay?