Gold Part 27

THE CAMP ON THE PORCUPINE

We should all have liked to start right in digging, but Bagsby strenuously opposed this.

"You-all have a rich diggings yere," said he; "and you want to stay a while and git the most there is out of them. And if you're going to do that, you've got to get a good ready. You've got make a decent camp, and a stockade for the hosses at night; and if you want yore grub to last you more than a month there's got to be some reg'lar hunting and fishing done."

"That'll take a week!" cried Johnny impatiently.

"Or more," agreed Bagsby with entire complacence. "You can bull at it and go to t'aring up the scenery if you want to; but you won't last long."

Unpalatable as this advice seemed, with all the loose gold lying about, we ended by adopting it. Indeed, we added slightly to our self-imposed tasks by determining on the construction of cradles. Yank had figured out a scheme having to do with hollowed logs and canvas with cleats that would obviate the need of lumber. We deputed Johnny to help him. Bagsby and Vasquez were to hunt and fish for the general benefit, while the rest of us put up a stockade, or corral, and erected a cabin.

I must confess the labour was pleasant. We had plenty of axes, and four of us were skilled in their use. Personally I like nothing better than the exercise of swinging a keen blade, the feeling of skillful accuracy and of nicely adjusted effort. We felled dozens, hundreds, of tall young pines eight inches to a foot in diameter, and planted them upright in a trench to form a stockade. Then we ran up a rough sort of cabin of two rooms. Yank, somewhat hampered by Johnny, finished his cradles, and turned in to help us. Bagsby and Vasquez brought in several deer and an elk, and trapped many quail and hares. We fared royally, worked healthfully in the shade of our trees, and enjoyed huge smokes and powwows around our fire of an evening. Every night we drove the horses within the enclosure; and slept heavily.

Always in the background of consciousness lay the gold, the incredibly abundant gold. It coloured our dreams, it gilded our labour. As we drew to the end of our construction work, I really believe we experienced a slight, a very slight, feeling of regret that this fine flavour of antic.i.p.ation was so nearly at an end. However, I noticed that though we completed the house at three of the afternoon, we none of us showed any disposition to wait for the morrow. We promptly lugged one of Yank's log cradles to the border of the stream and put in two hours washing.

The results were most encouraging, for we gained in that short time nearly two ounces of flake gold.

That evening we reviewed our situation carefully. The older heads of the party--Yank, Bagsby, Don Gaspar, and Missouri Jones--overruled our young desire to jump into things headlong.

"If this camp is going to get on right," said Yank, "we got to make some provision for working right. Somebody's got to be in camp all the time, that's sure--to cook some decent meals, do the odd ch.o.r.es, and keep an eye on the stock." Bagsby nodded emphatically at this. "And somebody's got to rustle game and fish. Yere's nine husky men to eat. If we leave one man in camp and two to hunt, we have six left for gold washing.

That's three to a cradle, and that's just right."

We came to that, too; and so settled into our routine. Bagsby was the only permanent office-holder among us. He was unanimously elected the official hunter. The rest of us agreed to take turn about at the other jobs. It was further agreed to increase our chances by utilizing the cradles at two totally different kinds of diggings. One we located on the bar to wash out the shingle. The other we carried to a point opposite the dry ravine in which I had found my three little nuggets.

Don Gaspar had worked like a nailer at the construction although he was utterly unskilled. Now at the end of the week he was worn out, although he stoutly maintained he was as good as ever. This high-bred, energetic gentleman we had all come to admire, both for his unfailing courtesy and his uncomplaining acceptance of hardships to which evidently he had never been accustomed. Exactly why he underwent the terrible exertions incidental to gold finding I have never quite fathomed. I do not believe he needed money; and I never saw one of his race fond of hard physical work. Indeed, he was the only member of his cla.s.s I ever met who would work. The truth of the matter probably lies somewhere between an outcropping of the old adventurous _conquistadore_ spirit and the fascination of the golden metal itself, quite apart from its dollars-and-cents value. Unanimously we voted in Don Gaspar as camp keeper for the first week. We wanted to give him a rest; but I do not think we pleased him. However, he bowed to our decision with his usual gracious courtesy. As hunting companion for Bagsby we appointed Missouri Jones, with the understanding that every two days that office was to have a new inc.u.mbent. Johnny, McNally, and I took charge of the dry wash, and the rest of the party tackled the bar. Of course we all--except Bagsby--were to share equally.

Unless the wash should prove very productive we would have the worst end of it, for we had to carry the pay dirt down to the stream's edge. For the purpose we used the pack-sacks--or _alforjas_, as the Spaniards call them. Each held about sixty or seventy pounds of dirt. We found this a sweaty and stumbly task--to stagger over the water-smoothed boulders of the wash, out across the shingle to the edge of the stream.

There one of us dumped his burden into the cradle; and we proceeded to wash it out. We got the "colour" at once in the residuary black sand.

All morning we laboured manfully, and discovered a brand new set of muscles. By comparison our former toil of mere digging and washing seemed light and pleasurable exercise.

"If this stuff don't run pretty high," grunted McNally, wiping the sweat from his eyes, "it's me voting for the bar. We can't stand all day of this."

He heaved the contents of his pack-sack into the cradle, and shook it disgustedly. Suddenly his jaw dropped and his eye widened with so poignant an expression that we both begged him, in alarm, to tell us what was the matter.

"Now, will you look at that!" he cried.

We followed the direction of his gaze, but saw only the meadow, and the horses feeding in it, and the thin smoke beyond, where Don Gaspar was bending his proud Castilian spirit to attend to fried steak and flapjacks.

"Look at those horses!" cried McNally with growing indignation.

"What's the matter with them?" cried Johnny and I in a breath.

"Matter with them! Nothing!" cried McNally with comical disgust. "The matter's with us." He rapped his knuckles on his head. "Solid, all the way through!" said he. "Why, save from nat'ral born human imbelicity, should horses be living like gentlemen while gentlemen are working like horses!"

We took the hint. That afternoon we saddled the pack-horses and led them, laden with the dirt, back and forth between the ravine and the cradle.

All of us worked until rather later in the day than usual.... The hunters, too, did not return until dark. We weighed the results of our labour with eager interest. From our cradle we had taken eleven ounces, while those working the bar had gained just over nine. That was a good day's work, and we were much elated.

"And most any time," exulted Johnny, "we'll run into a big pocket with thousands."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE INDIANS

Although we did not immediately run into the expected thousands, nor did the promise of that first glorious day of discovery quite fulfil itself, nevertheless our new diggings turned out to be very rich. We fell into routine; and the days and weeks slipped by. Bagsby and one companion went out every day to hunt or to fish. We took turns at a vacation in camp. Every night we "blew" our day's collection of sand, weighed the gold, and packed it away. Our acc.u.mulations were getting to be very valuable.

For a month we lived this idyllic life quite unmolested, and had gradually come to feel that we were so far out of the world that nothing would ever disturb us. The days seemed all alike, clear, sparkling, cloudless. It was my first experience with the California climate, and these things were a perpetual wonder to my New England mind.

Then one day when I was camp keeper, at the upper end of our long meadow, a number of men emerged from the willows and hesitated uncertainly. They were too far away to be plainly distinguishable, but I believed in taking no chances, so I fired my revolver to attract the attention of my companions. They looked up from their labour, saw the men, and promptly came into camp.

The group still hesitated at the edge of the thicket. Then one of them waved something white. We waved in return; whereupon they advanced slowly in our direction.

As they neared we saw them to be Indians. Their leader held before him a stick to which had been tied a number of white feathers. As they approached us they began to leap and dance to the accompaniment of a weird rising and falling chant. They certainly did not look very formidable, with their heterogeneous mixture of clothing, their round, black, stupid faces and their straight hair. Most of them were armed simply with bows and arrows, but three carried specimens of the long Spanish musket.

Buck Barry promptly sallied out to meet them, and shook hands with the foremost. They then advanced to where we were gathered and squatted on the ground. They were certainly a villainous and dirty looking lot of savages, short, thickset, round faced, heavy featured, with coa.r.s.e, black, matted hair and little twinkling eyes. A more brutish lot of human beings I had never seen; and I was almost deceived into thinking them too stupid to be dangerous. The leaders had on remnants of civilized clothing, but the rank and file were content with sc.r.a.ps of blanket, old ragged coats, single shirts, and the like. The oldest man produced a long pipe from beneath his blanket, filled it with a few grains of coa.r.s.e tobacco, lighted it by means of a coal from our fire, puffed twice on it, and pa.s.sed it to me. I perforce had to whiff at it also, though the necessity nearly turned my stomach. I might next have given it to one of our own party, but I did not want to deprive him of my own first hand sensation, so I handed it back to another of the visitors for fresh inoculation, as it were. Evidently I had by accident hit on acceptable etiquette, as deep grunts of satisfaction testified.

After we had had a whiff all around, the chief opened negotiations in Spanish. Most of us by now had learned enough of it from our intercourse with Don Gaspar and Vasquez to understand without interpretation.

The Indians said they wanted to trade.

We replied that we saw nothing they might trade with us.

In return they produced some roots and several small bags of pine nuts.

We then explained that we were reduced in ammunition, and had little food.

Don Gaspar here interpolated hastily, saying that in his judgment it would be absolutely necessary that we made some sort of a present to avoid the appearance of intending an affront. Buck Barry and Jones seemed instantly to accept this necessity.

"Give them two or three of the saddle blankets," suggested Barry, after a moment's thought. "We will have several light hosses going out; and if we have to pad the saddles we can git along with skins or something."

We gave our visitors the blankets, therefore. They seemed well pleased, arose, and shortly made a primitive sort of a camp a short distance outside our stockade. We did no more washing that day. About five o'clock our hunters came in with the best meat of a blacktail deer.

Bagsby listened attentively to our account of the interview. Then he took a hindquarter of the newly killed buck and departed for the Indians' camp, where he stayed for an hour.

"I don't think they are out for meanness," he announced when he returned. "They tell me this yere is on a sort of short cut from some of the Truckee lakes down to their villages. But we got to keep a sharp eye on our horses; and we got to stand guard to-night."

Very early in the morning, when we were just up, several of the elders came over to tell us that some of the young men would stay to work for us, if we so desired. We replied that we had no goods with which to pay for work. Shortly after, the whole tribe vanished down river.

For two nights Bagsby insisted on standing guard, and on having some of us take turns at it. Then we declined flatly to do so any longer. The Indians had gone far downstream, as their trail indicated to our hunters, and had shown no signs of even hesitating on the way. We fell into our old routine, and laughed at Bagsby when he shook his head.

About this time Johnny and McNally, scrambling of a Sunday for the sake of a view, stumbled on a small ravine that came nearer realizing our hoped-for strike than anything we had yet seen. After "puddling out" a few potfuls of the pay dirt, we decided to move the cradles. It was not over a half mile from camp, but was out of sight of the stockade. The move was the occasion for a hot discussion. Bagsby wanted to reorganize, and we were reluctant.

"Thar ought to be two men in camp," said he, "and thar ought never to be less'n three together out hunting. And that's my idee--that ye're paying me money for."