Forty-one Thieves Part 3

No one seemed to know William Brown.

"He lives a mile up the canon," continued Francis.

"Oh, you mean Bed-bug Brown," said Mat Bailey.

"Yes," replied Francis, "that's the name he commonly goes by."

"I know the man," said the doctor. "Says he came here in '54 and that he has had a picnic ever since. Though he couldn't have had much of a picnic that first winter, when he camped out by the big log; and only a few winters ago Palmer had to send him a quarter of beef."

"Well, Brown is a born detective," said Francis. "He worked up the Caffey case like a professional."

Ben Caffey's brother had been hanged in Wisconsin, in the region of the lead mines, ten years before. He was innocent of the crime charged, and Ben had vowed vengeance on the jury. All twelve of the jurors, though scattered over the country from New Orleans to the canon of the Middle Yuba, had met violent deaths. The last man had been a neighbor of Brown's. Just before his death a stranger with a limp left arm had appeared at Moore's Flat; and Brown had proved to his own satisfaction that the same man with a limp arm had appeared at New Orleans just before the death of the eleventh juror in that city. The man with the limp arm was Ben Caffey. Such was Brown's story. People had not paid much attention to it, nor to the murdered man's lonely grave by the river. Henry Francis, evidently, gave Brown full credence, but others present regarded "Bed-bug Brown" as a joke. True, he was an intelligent little man. He had taught school at Graniteville several winters, and had succeeded better at this business than at placer mining on the bars of the Middle Yuba. But "Bed-bug Brown," perennial picnicker, was not a scientific sleuth.

So when the council of war broke up, a feeling of skepticism prevailed.

Mat Bailey saw more possibilities in his own suggestion than in the $10,000 reward. Dr. Mason saw more possibilities, however slight, in the reward than in the proposed detective. And Henry Francis, though he had known c.u.mmins from boyhood, and was even now settling up his estate, pretended to see more possibilities in a stranger than in honest John Keeler--or himself.

CHAPTER V

Old Man Palmer

Robert Palmer, tall, thin, bent with toil, had lived in California thirty years. In May, 1849, when the snow drifts were still deep in the canons of the Sierras, he had crossed the mountains, past Donner Lake and the graves of the Donner party, through Emigrant's Gap, to the valley of the Sacramento. He was thirty-two years old at that time,--no mere youth, seeking treasure at the end of a rainbow. He was already a man of experience and settled habits, inured to hardship and adverse fortune. As a youth he had left his native hills of Connecticut, to sell clocks, first in the South and then in the lumber camps of Michigan.

There, the business of Yankee pedlar having failed, he found himself stranded. His father was a prosperous farmer; but a stepmother ruled the household. So young Palmer hired out to a Michigan farmer, for he was one of those hardy New Englanders who ask no favors of fortune.

Imagining a pretty frontier girl to be a sylvan G.o.ddess, with a Puritan's devotion he made love to her, only to be scorned for his modesty. But failure and disappointment served but to strengthen him, and he struck out for California.

He nearly perished on the way there, while crossing the deserts of Nevada. In Wyoming he had fallen into the hands of that brave true man, John Enos, then in his prime, who had guided Bonneville, Fremont and the Mormon pilgrims, and who,--living to the age of a hundred and four years,--saw the wilderness he had loved and explored for eighty years transformed to a proud empire. Enos had guided Fremont through Wyoming.

It is rather too bad that Palmer could not have accompanied Fremont and Kit Carson when, in February, 1844, they crossed the snowy summit of the Sierras and descended through the deep drifts to Sutter's Fort and safety. That was four years before the discovery of gold in El Dorado County.

Palmer was not crazy for gold. Arrived in the Sacramento Valley, he spent three or four years at farming. Perhaps his Yankee shrewdness saw larger profits in hay and cattle than in washing gravel. But certainly his New England integrity and soberness of character were more in keeping with the spirit of the pioneer than with the spirit of the adventurer.

While reckless young men were swarming up the valleys of South, Middle and North Yuba, finding fabulous quant.i.ties of gold and squandering the same upon the Chinese harlots of Downieville, Robert Palmer was making hay while the sun shone, which was every day in the Sacramento Valley.

But land t.i.tles were so uncertain that in 1853 he turned to mining,--at Jefferson, on the South Yuba. He prospered to such an extent that by 1859 he had sent $8,000 back to Connecticut to pay his debts; and he had laid by as much more. Frozen out of his claim by a water company--for without water a miner can do nothing--he sold out to the company in 1860, and went over to the Middle Yuba, where he bought a claim on Fillmore Hill, with a water ditch of its own.

Here Palmer lived and toiled for twenty years, washing the dirt and gravel of an ancient river-bed high up on the hill-top between Wolf Creek and the Middle Yuba. He rented water from his ditch, sometimes at the rate of two hundred and fifty dollars a month, to other miners. From the gra.s.s roots on the hillside some lucky fellows cleaned up $10,000 in a few days. For several years John Keeler and Will c.u.mmins rented water from Palmer and helped the "old man" keep his ditch in repair.

The old man lived alone, industrious, and so economical as to excite the mirth or the pity of his rough neighbors. Some who heard that he had loaned $60,000 to a water company at 12 per cent. interest, regarded him contemptuously as a miser. How else explain his shabby clothes, his old rubber boots, that were out at the toes, his life of toil and self-denial? Palmer never gambled, nor caroused, nor spent money on women. He attended strictly to business, bringing to the bank at Moore's Flat from time to time gold dust of high grade, worth from $19 to $20 an ounce. And those who bought his gold marked how rough and torn were the old man's fingers, the nails broken and blackened and forced away from the flesh.

But Keeler and c.u.mmins had seen through the rough exterior. They knew something of his charities. They had tasted his good cheer; for he kept a well-stocked larder. They had seen with amus.e.m.e.nt his family of pet cats seated at table with him, and each receiving its rations in due order, like so many children. Keeler told with glee about the old man's horse and mule, idly eating their heads off on the hillside. They had come to Palmer in payment of a debt, and although he had had a fair offer for the mule he had refused to sell, on the ground that without the mule the horse would be lonesome.

Robert Palmer knew what it was to be lonesome. True, he employed a hired man or two occasionally, and when he cleaned up his sluices he employed several--and, let it be said, he paid good wages. There were neighbors, but with most of them he had little in common. The Woolsey boys, at the ranch in the bottom of the canon, whose widowed mother had come from St.

Louis to marry old Sherwood, had grown up under his kindly eye. In early boyhood their active limbs had scaled the forbidding ledges of Fillmore Hill, and Robert Palmer had granted them permission to hunt on his claim.

One night in his cabin on the mountain top, when the gold dust from the last clean-up had not yet been disposed of, he was startled by a noise outside. He blew out the light and hid his little bag of treasure in the ashes of his forge. None too soon, for there was a summons at the door, and when he opened it he was confronted by three masked men. With drawn pistols they demanded his money. He said he had none. It was useless to resist, so he let them bind him hand and foot. Again they demanded his money. Again he said he had none. They knew better, and they threatened to burn him alive in his cabin. But Palmer was firm. Then they burnt his legs with a hot poker, and threatened to shoot him, as they might have done with impunity in that lonesome place. Still he was firm, so they set him on the hot stove and tortured him in that way. One of the party, more humane than the rest, protested against more extreme measures; so that, after searching the cabin, they gave up their enterprise, baffled by that indomitable man. Before leaving him one of the men asked:

"Mr. Palmer, do you know us?"

Realizing that such knowledge meant death, he replied:

"No, I don't know any of you."

And so they left him. The lone miner no doubt had suspicions concerning several of his worthless neighbors; but to the day of his death he kept such suspicions to himself.

Is it any wonder, living in that lawless country, that Robert Palmer became almost a recluse? But why should he work so? He was working unselfishly for others, as you will see when you read his will, for his twenty-nine nephews and nieces. As if a heap of double eagles would be of any particular use to relatives who had well-nigh forgotten him! No, they had not forgotten. For one nephew borrowed money, which was, however, repaid, and one niece secured five hundred dollars by sharp practice worse than robbery. Robert Palmer made the mistake that many an unselfish man has made, the mistake that insurance companies insist is wisdom: he labored to provide others with gold, as though gold were a subst.i.tute for thrift, prudence, and self-reliance. Never mind, the old fellow did nephews and nieces no harm, though he disappointed several who had depended upon him to lift them from poverty; for in the end his hard-earned money was lost. His only legacy was his example of thrift, unselfishness, and integrity. When men go about gathering riches for others, let them gather things of the spirit. The answer to this, perhaps, is that even such riches cannot be transmitted, that every soul must enrich itself. That is true; but a n.o.ble character is at least inspiring, and leaves the whole world richer.

In the case of one nephew, Robert Palmer found a man who loved him but needed none of his gold. This man was an astronomer, who, returning from a scientific expedition to Behring Strait in 1869, paid his uncle a visit. At that time this meant a trip of forty miles into the mountains by stage and on horseback from the line of the newly constructed railroad; for the narrow gauge from Colfax to Nevada City was not built until 1876. It was a happy day for Robert Palmer when his sister's son,--covered with dust,--scaled Fillmore Hill. Here was a meeting of two strong men, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxons, large of frame, spare, rugged, their fair skin tanned by the blazing sun of California.

What a glorious visit they had! And how they revelled in a thousand recollections of their New England home! For nine days the astronomer shared his uncle's cabin, a new one, built of sawn timbers and boards, and quite comfortable. Several days they worked together in the mine; and when at last the hour of parting came, Robert Palmer sent by his nephew a present to his grandnephews in Washington, the astronomer's three small sons. It was the gold mined in those nine days, some one hundred and thirty dollars in value. Thereafter the boys played miners and stage-robbers and wild West generally, with sheet gold in the guise of yellow envelopes hidden away between the leaves of books to represent gold mines.

CHAPTER VI

Two of a Kind

The day after the council of war at Moore's Flat, John Keeler crossed the canon of the Middle Yuba to talk over the death of his old partner with Robert Palmer. As he clambered up the steep side of Fillmore Hill to the claim he had worked with c.u.mmins fifteen years before, all the poetry and all the sadness of life in California came over him. How vividly he remembered his arrival, at the age of eighteen, in this land of romance and adventure! He had reached Moore's Flat on the Fourth of July, 1860, when bronzed miners were celebrating in reckless fashion.

The saloons were crowded, and card games were in progress, with gold coins stacked at the corners of the tables. Out of doors some red-faced fellows were running races in the streets and shouting like wild Indians. Over the door of a restaurant was the sign "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry," and the youth pondered the words of Scripture following these festive words, but not quoted by the enterprising proprietor.

He remembered now, after nineteen years, the strange aspect of nature in this strange land. What great mountains! What deep canons! What huge pines, with cones as large as a rolling-pin! The strange manzanita bushes, the chaparral, the buck-eye with its plumes, the fragrant mountain lily, like an Easter lily, growing wild. It had seemed good to him, a stranger in this strange land, to see old friends in the squirrels that scampered through the woods and crossed his path, to find alders, and blossoming dog-wood, the mountain brake, and his childhood's friend the mullen stalk. Even to this day when he came upon an orchid, or a wild rose, with its small pink petals (smaller in this red sterile soil than in his native country), or when a humming bird in its shining plumage came to sip honey from the flowers, or when in the still woods he heard the liquid notes of a hermit thrush, the romance and the reverence of youth thrilled him.

John Keeler was something of a poet, though the needs of his family at Eureka South kept the bread and b.u.t.ter question in the foreground. He must see "old man Palmer" to talk over the death of c.u.mmins. He was comforted a little when the old man's small black dog, Bruce, came frisking down the trail to meet him; and when Sammy, the cat, tail in air and purring a thousand welcomes, rubbed his sleek fur against the visitor's boots, Keeler fore-tasted sweet solace for sorrow.

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Keeler! Mighty glad to see you!" And then in a changed voice, "You're f.a.gged out. It's an all-fired steep trail. Come in."

"No, thank you," replied Keeler, and he seated himself upon a chair in the door-yard. "It's pleasant out here under the pines. I want to talk."

"I've been expecting you," said Palmer, "ever since the news came about c.u.mmins."

"Well, if it wasn't for my wife and boy, I'd pull up stakes, and get out of California."

"Don't blame you. This thieving and promiscuous killing are enough to discourage anybody. Too bad they can't get the robbers, just this once, and string 'em up."

"I'm a peaceable man, as you know, Mr. Palmer. But I'd be willing to hang those fellows with my own hands. It wouldn't help Will c.u.mmins any, but it would give me solid satisfaction."

"Well, Keeler, I'm glad of one thing, c.u.mmins was a bachelor, like me, and not a married man."

"I've thought about that, but it don't give me any comfort. Will ought to have married years ago. His life might have counted for something then; but now it seems as if it had been wasted."

"Maybe you think my life's been wasted, too?"

"No, Mr. Palmer, you know I could never think that, after your kindness to Will and me."

"Well, Will c.u.mmins was more generous than I ever was," answered Palmer.

"Main trouble with Will was his temper, which was no better than mine.

Every bad man in these mountains knew that Will c.u.mmins was ready to treat him to his own medicine."