Gold Part 51

"Just took it".

"Doesn't it belong to anybody?"

"It's part of one of these big Greaser ranchos," said Pine impatiently.

"I made a good try to git to the bottom of it. One fellar says he owns it, and will sell; then comes another that says _he_ owns it and won't sell. And so on. They don't nohow use this country, except a few cattle comes through once in a while. I got tired of monkeying with them and I came out here and squatted. If I owe anybody anything, they got to show me who it is. I don't believe none of them knows themselves who it really belongs to."

"I'd hate to put a lot of work into a place, and then have to move out,"

said I doubtfully.

"I'd like to see anybody move me out!" observed old man Pine grimly.

Farther up in the hills they were putting together the framework of a sawmill, working on it at odd times when the ranch itself did not demand attention. It was built of ma.s.sive hewn timbers, raised into place with great difficulty. They had no machinery as yet, but would get that later out of their first farming profits.

"There ain't no hurry about it anyway," explained Pine, "for as yet there ain't no demand for lumber yereabouts."

"I should say not!" exploded Johnny with a derisive shriek of laughter, "unless you're going to sell it to the elks and coyotes!"

Pine turned toward him seriously.

"This is all good land yere," said he, "and they'll want lumber."

"It looks mighty good to me," said Yank.

"Well, why don't you settle?" urged Pine.

"And me with fifteen hundred good dollars?" replied Yank. "It ain't such an everlasting fortune; but it'll git me a place back home; and I've had my fun. This country is too far off. I'm going back home."

To this sentiment Johnny and I heartily agreed. It is a curious fact that not one man in ten thousand even contemplated the possibility of making California his permanent home. It was a place in which to get as rich as he could, and then to leave.

Nevertheless we left our backwoods friends reluctantly; and at the top of the hill we stopped our two horses to look back on the valley. It lay, with its brown, freshly upturned earth, its scattered broad oaks, its low wood-crowned knolls, as though asleep in the shimmering warm floods of golden sunshine. Through the still air we heard plainly the beat of an axe, and the low, drowsy clucking of hens. A peaceful and grateful feeling of settled permanence, to which the restless temporary life of mining camps had long left us strangers, filled us with the vague stirrings of envy.

The feeling soon pa.s.sed. We marched cheerfully away, our hopes busy with what we would do when we reached New York. Johnny and I had acc.u.mulated very fair sums of money, in spite of our loss at the hands of the robbers, what with the takings at Hangman's Gulch, what was left from the robbery, and Italian Bar. These sums did not const.i.tute an enormous fortune, to be sure. There was nothing spectacular in our winnings; but they totalled about five times the amount we could have made at home; and they represented a very fair little stake with which to start life.

We were young.

We found Sacramento under water. A sluggish, brown flood filled the town and spread far abroad over the flat countryside. Men were living in the second stories of such buildings as possessed second stories, and on the roofs of others. They were paddling about in all sorts of improvised boats and rafts. I saw one man keeping a precarious equilibrium in a baker's trough; and another sprawled out face down on an India rubber bed paddling overside with his hands.

We viewed these things from the thwarts of a boat which we hired for ten dollars. Our horses we had left outside of town on the highlands.

Everywhere we pa.s.sed men and shouted to them a cheery greeting.

Everybody seemed optimistic and inclined to believe that the flood would soon go down.

"Anyway, she's killed the rats," one man shouted in answer to our call.

We grinned an appreciation of what we thought merely a facetious reply.

Rats had not yet penetrated to the mines, so we did not know anything about them. Next day, in San Francisco, we began to apprehend the man's remark.

Thus we rowed cheerfully about, having a good time at the other fellow's expense. Suddenly Johnny, who was steering, dropped his paddle with an exclamation. Yank and I turned to see what had so struck him. Beyond the trees that marked where the bank of the river ought to be we saw two tall smokestacks belching forth a great volume of black smoke.

"A steamer!" cried Yank.

"Yes, and a good big one!" I added.

We lay to our oars and soon drew alongside. She proved to be a side wheeler, of fully seven hundred tons, exactly like the craft we had often seen plying the Hudson.

"Now how do you suppose they got her out here?" I marvelled.

She was almost completely surrounded by craft of all descriptions; her decks were crowded. We read the name _McKim_ on her paddle boxes.

A man with an official cap appeared at the rail.

"Bound for San Francisco?" I called to him.

"Off in two minutes," he replied.

"What's the fare?"

"Forty dollars."

"Come on, boys," said I to my comrades, at the same time seizing a dangling rope.

"Hold on!" cried Yank. "How about our two horses and our blankets, and this boat?"

I cast my eye around, and discovered a boy of fourteen or fifteen in the stern of a neat fisherman's dory a few feet away.

"Here!" I called to him. "Do you want two good horses and some blankets?"

"I ain't got any money."

"Don't need any. These are free. We're going down on this boat. You'll find the outfit under the big white oak two miles above the forks on the American. They're yours if you'll go get them."

"What do you want me to do?" he demanded suspiciously.

"Two things: return this boat to its owner--a man named Lilly who lives----"

"I know the boat," the boy interrupted.

"The other is to be sure to go up to-day after those horses. They're picketed out."

"All right," agreed the boy, whose enthusiasm kindled as his belief in the genuineness of the offer was a.s.sured.

I seized a rope, swung myself up to the flat fender, and thence to the deck.

"Come on!" I called to Yank and Johnny, who were hesitating. "It'll cost more than those horses and blankets are worth to wait."

Thereupon they followed me. The boy made fast our boat to his own. Five minutes later we were dropping down the river.

"This is what I call real luxury," said Johnny, returning from an inspection of our craft. "There's a barroom, and a gambling layout, and velvet carpets and chairs, mirrors, a minstrel show, and all the fixings. Now who'd expect to run against a layout like this on the river?"

"What I'd like to know is how they got her out here," said I. "Look at her! She's a river boat. A six-foot wave ought to swamp her!"