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This etext was produced by David A. Schwan

Down the Mother Lode - Pioneer Tales of California

By Vivia Hemphill

Foreword

So many inquiries have been made as to exactly where, and what is the
"Mother Lode"!

The geologist and the historian agree as to its location and
composition, but the old miners and "sojourners" of the vanished golden
era give strangely different versions of it. Some of these are here set
down, if not all for your enlightenment at least, I hope, for your
entertainment.

That is, after all, the principal aim of these tales of the old days in
California, that are gone "for good." Mark Twain says in his preface to
"Roughing It" that there is a great deal of information in his work
which he regrets very much but which really could not be helped, as
"information seems to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar
of roses out of the otter"!

These stories make no such particular claim! They are merely historical
fragments of their everyday life, gathered from a passing generation
before they shall be finally lost. Each one is based upon truth.
Somewhere, sometime, some place, certain characters lived the scenes and
actions here described.

The title "Mother Lode" has been used in its broader sense as
exemplifying the source of all gold in California, and the life which
arose from it.

The mining engineer said: "The Mother Lode runs south from El Dorado
County to the lower boundary of Mariposa County. It stretches past the
towns of Sutter Creek, Jackson, San Andreas, Angel's Camp and the road
to Yosemite far down below Coulterville. The lode begins suddenly and
ends as suddenly, and though we have searched up and down the state we
have never been able to pick it up again."

"Has it any relation to the Comstock Lode?" was asked.

"None whatever. Curiously enough, in Nevada City and vicinity it would
appear that at one time in the earth's making, a great fissure opened in
forming California and a wedge of Nevada mining country was pushed into
it. North of there the California stratas begin again."

"But it was always my belief that these localities were on the Mother
Lode, as well as the Georgetown and Auburn country."

"Many persons are apparently under that impression, but the geological
surveys of the government place it in the exact location I have given
you."

The "Old Miner, '49er," said: "We hunted most all o' our lives, lookin'
for her! We called her the Mother Lode, because we thought that all the
gold in the state must a' come from her an' washed down the rivers onto
the bars where we found it. We thought she'd be pure gold, an' a hundred
feet wide an' go on, world without end. We looked, an' looked, an' after
quartz minin' come in, we dug an' dug, but we never found the old girl
exceptin' here an' there.

"Joe Dance, that old prospector that died last year, he lost his mind
lookin' for the big lode. Made some rich strikes in his day, Joe did,
but he never could stop to work 'em. He was always waitin' for the
mother of 'em all, he said, who'd put him on the road to the heart a'
molten gold in the middle a' the earth.

"We old fellows tramped all the way through the hills with only a burro
for company most a' the time, an' you'll ride down a broad paved way,
soon, in your automobile. You'll go in days, where it took us months,
an' some brainy young engineer will locate the old girl, most likely, in
new-fangled ways that were unknown in our time.

"Well, the world whirls fast, now-a-days. Guess they'll need all the
gold in the old girl's lap to keep on greasin' the machinery. I take off
my hat to this generation. I hope they'll find it!"

Hittell says: "The Mother Lode is one of the most extraordinary
metalliferous veins in the world. Gold-bearing lodes usually range only
five or six miles, but this can be traced for more than sixty. The rock
is a hard and white quartz, rich in very fine particles of gold, and the
vein varies in width from a foot to thirty feet.

"There are in some portions of its course side branches or companion
veins, as they are sometimes called, making the total width nearly one
hundred feet. Nor is the direction of the lode always in a straight
line. Though usually found within half a mile of what may be considered
its normal course, it is sometimes found as far as two or three miles
from it, and there are cases of other lodes (three, in all) entirely
distinct, which in some instances approach so close as to be confounded
with it."

There are numerous mines along the whole length of the lode, famous for
having yielded their millions. One quartz ledge is said to have yielded
for a long time, two-thirds gold. They say of the Morgan Mine, at
Carson's Creek near Melones, "It appeared to be rich beyond parallel. On
one occasion $110,000.00 worth of gold was thrown down at a single
blast."

Many expeditions were made in search of the fabled Great Lode but all
attempts were vain.

'The old spread-eagle judge said: "Yes, sir; the Mother Lode dips up in
a bit of a circle with no beginning and no end, in the western foothills
of the Sierra Mountains. Down about Melones, and Sonora, and Angel's
Camp it goes, and through Table Mountain, and under Jackass Hill. It
comes north, and north, past Coloma, and Auburn, to Nevada City and then
it disappears."

I remembered the engineer's statement, but was silent.

"It was the haunt of Harte, and Twain, and Canfield in the north; it was
the bank of such men as Hopkins, Crocker, Huntington and Stanford; the
foundation of one of the greatest states in the Union, the Mother Lode,
the Mother of Gold!"

"Child, my old eyes have watched it spread for nearly ninety years - the
power of gold, and of the men who came to seek it, The influence of gold
controlled by the human intellect. I am old and tired and soon I shall
sleep, but the old see clearly, too clearly, that which they are
leaving, and that to which they pass."

"'Thus, facing the stars, we go out amongst them into darkness'," I
quoted, softly.

"Not to darkness, but to eternal light, to rise again from the Mother
Lode to mingle in the busy lives of men."

"'Who maketh His messengers with two, and three, and four pairs of
wings'."

"Exactly. To be born again, and yet again. The real mother-vein of gold
was imbued in the men shaped by the life of the frontier. It was the
cornerstone of great fortunes, of families, of enterprises, of
achievements which are peculiarly California's own.

"It was the clearing house and open sesame of the vast trade of the
Orient which is just coming into being; the foundation for the bridge of
gold which shall reach across the seas; a fit monument to posterity
which shall be erected with all the lightness and grace and stability of
the present cultured generations, born with their feet in the flowers
grown from the mother-gold of decent manhood and glorious womanhood -
the precious metals of the spirit, unalloyed and unafraid.

"They are the true Mother Lode, the bourne of the seekers of gold,
greater, far, than the crazed brains of the old prospectors had the
power to conceive. A further-reaching, broader arc than the most
wondrous rainbow of their imaginings born of dreams, and built of hunger
and despair."

"So shall we find, at last, the Mother Lode, the virginity of the
essence of creation, the beginning and the end. The curve of the circle
which is unchanging, insoluble, omniscient; which shall return to that
which created it; which is all; which is God!"

"'49"

"We have worked our claims,
We have spent our gold,
Our barks are astrand on the bars;
We are battered and old,
Yet at night we behold
Outcroppings of gold in the stars.

Where the rabbits play,
Where the quail all day
Pipe on the chaparral hill;
A few more days,
And the last of us lays
His pick aside and is still.

We are wreck and stray,
We are cast away,
Poor battered old hulks and spars!
But we hope and pray,
On the judgment Day,
We shall strike it, up in the stars.

- Joaquin Miller.

Contents

One Sunday in Stinson's Bar
The Tom Bell Stronghold
The Hanging of Charlie Price
Rattlesnake Dick
Indian Vengeance
Grizzly Bob of Snake Gulch
Curley Coppers the Jack
The Race of the Shoestring Gamblers
The Dragon and the Tomahawk
The Barstow Lynching

Copyright, 1922

By Vivia Hemphill

One Sunday in Stinson's Bar

I

"On that broad stage of empire won,
Whose footlights were the setting sun;
Whose flats a distant background rose
In trackless peaks of endless snows;
Here genius bows, and talent waits
To copy that but One creates."

- Bret Harte.

Now-a-days when you want to go from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada
country you step into your perfectly good Packard (or whatever it is -
all the way down to a motorcycle side car), and you ferry across the bay
and the straits, and if the motor-cop isn't around, you come shooting up
the highway forty miles an hour, and at the end of a glorious five-hour
run you are there.

In the early fifties - when there was less to see, too - you took more
time to it. You came to Sacramento on the river boat. Then if you were
rich, you bought a horse or a mule and rode for the rest of your
journey. If you were poor, or thrifty perhaps, you walked, or tried to
get a ride on one of the ox-freight teams which plied their way across
Haggin Grant to Auburn and Dutch Flat, or to Folsom and Coloma.

Later a railway was built as far as Auburn station, then situated at a
point three miles east of Loomis which was at that time called Pino.

Nothing remains of Auburn station. But the road bed of the old railway
is still to be found in certain wooded tracts which have not given way
to the fruit ranches; and the highway from Fair Oaks into Folsom follows
the old cuts and grades for several miles.

In the days preceding and immediately following the discovery of gold in
California, building was very difficult. Every stick of lumber in my
grandfather's house came by ship "around the Horn," and the fruit trees
grape vines, flowers, even bees, for his lovely garden: were all sent
from Europe.

In the smaller settlements there was seldom more than one large building
which could be used for social purposes, and this was often the card
room or bar room in connection with the hotel of the town.

So here is the tale that was told of one Sunday in Stinson's bar room,
in the late '50s at Auburn Station:

They tried to give a ball once a year at Stinson's. Persons came to it
from 30 miles about, particularly if they were women, and every woman
divided each dance among four men. When a man invited a lady to come to
a dance, in many instances he insisted upon the privilege of buying her
a silken gown and slippers to wear, and this was not considered unusual,
nor was she in any way obligated to him for it. There were so few
"ladies" that they were treated as little short of divinities.

This Saturday night there had been no dance, and the men at Gentleman
Jack's table at Stinson's had played "three-card monte" on through the
dawn and the sunrise, and into broad daylight. The door was pushed open,
letting in a rush of cool, sweet air which guttered the candles set in
old bottles, and drove the heavy fog of tobacco smoke toward the
blackened ceiling. A voice boomed forth:

"Come on, now, gentlemen. Two ladies have come with posies in tall
silver vases and a white altar cloth for this table. The preacher's
coming over from Folsom, and there will be church held here in one hour.
He's a busy man today. An infant will be given a license to travel the
long and uncertain road to heaven, and a pair of happy lovers will be
made one."

"One - unhappy pair."

It's William Duncan. He's intoxicated again," drawled Gentleman Jack,
stretching his graceful length and smiling at a long, aristocratic
figure crouched over a small table in a corner. "His last strike turned
out to be only a small pocket, and so he drowns his woes in liquor, as
usual." He bowed to his recent card partners. "Gentlemen, I am sincerely
sorry for your losses this night. I shall sleep an hour before the holy
man arrives. He sauntered out, stuffing a buckskin bag of gold dust into
his pocket.

"There lies my pocket - in his pocket," muttered Duncan. "No, Stinson"
raising his voice authoritatively, "I shall not go out. It is my desire
to pray for my sins today * * * and there has a letter come from
overseas which I must read - if I can. If I can - "

In an hour the room was cleared of smoke, greasy cards, poker chips and
empty bottles. The bar was in a small room apart. The poker table,
supplemented with a box, was covered with a handsome altar cloth flanked
by huge silver candlesticks and vases which had been carried across the
plains. Every individual in the community came to church and stayed
afterward for the christening. At least twenty men expressed a wish to
be god-father to the baby and the proud mother accepted all offers. When
the christening was over, William Duncan lurched to his feet, his
high-bred face full of tenderness, his long-fingered, fine grained hands
poised over the rosy child, while he quoted:

"May time who sheds his blight o'er all,
And daily dooms some joy to death.
O'er thee let years so gently fall,
They shall not crush one flower beneath!"

"Ah, 'here comes the bride!' 'All the world's a stage!' Let us on with
the next scene," and he reeled back to his little table in the corner.

The kissing and congratulations after the wedding were interrupted by
the shouts of a man on horseback, and riding hard.

"Where's the minister? Send for Doc Miller! That beast of a Mexican
horse thief - he' shot Jim Muldoon down at Dolton's Bar. Jim caught he's
stealing his horse and I'm afraid the dirty greaser's killed him. We got
'im, though, before he skipped. Somebody go down to Rattlesnake for Doc
Miller. They're bringing 'em both here."

When Doc Miller saw Muldoon stretched on the barroom table, the same
table which a few minutes before had served as an altar he shook his
head.

"He will be gone in half an hour," he said. The men standing about began
taking off their hats.

"I wish to write home," whispered Muldoon. The young mother handed her
baby to its father and seizing pencil and paper, ran forward. The
minister opened his prayer book at the service for the dying.

When that service had been read, and what had been Muldoon carried away
to be made ready for the last sleep, only the minister and the tall
Englishman were left in the bar-room.

"In the midst of life we are in death," muttered Duncan.

"True," rebuked the other "so live well the life which the Lord, thy
God, hath provided thee." Will Duncan laughed aloud.

"It is too late, Man-o'-God! There is no place in the world for a
younger son." The minister had not heard. He sprang toward the open
window, calling:

"Wait! It is written - 'Thou shalt not kill!' Bring him in, like just
and honest men, for a hearing. He may be a horse thief and a murderer
but you shall take the rope from his neck and he shall speak in his own
defense before he goes to his Maker."

So a hearing was given (although grudgingly, and with audible grumbling)
by the friends of Muldoon across the table which had so lately been his
bier, but in the end they took the Mexican out for the short-cut to
retribution.

Two hours later, around the same table was solemnized the funeral
service of Jim Muldoon. The minister would not return for six weeks. It
must be held at once. Gentleman Jack gave a suit of finest black
broadcloth for a shroud. and the little bride, keeping one flower from
her wedding bouquet, placed the rest in the dead man's hands. She kissed
him softly on his forehead, whispering through her tears. "For the ones
at home who loved you," and stood watching as six men carried him away
to the tiny cemetery under the trees. on a hill.

Vesper services were over and the weary minister and his congregation
had gone before Duncan found courage to open and read his letter. His
elder brother, heir to the title and great houses and landed estates of
his family, had been killed in the hunting field and he, being next in
line, was to come home to succeed to the position.

He, William - Duncan - Claibourne - Earl of - but no, his family name
had never been told in California.

Portions of the services he had heard that day drifted through his mind:
"Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he
shall not enter therein. * * * We do sign him with the sign of the cross
in token hereafter that he shall manfully fight against the sin, the
world, and the devil; and to continue Christ's faithful soldier unto his
life's end." So, the child starting on his earthly journey with the
minister's blessing and the backing of twenty god-fathers!

The holy old church service which he had heard at home in stately
English cathedrals - the nuggets in the contribution plate - the radiant
bride who had come across the plains to hear "Dearly Beloved, We are
gathered together," standing beside the man she loved. The service for
the dying: "When we shall have served thee in our generation we may be
gathered unto our Fathers, having the testimony of a good conscience,
the confidence of a certain faith, in favor with Thee our God, and in
perfect charity with the world." So, Jim Muldoon, cut down before his
time, and his slayer out there in the darkness on the end of a rope.

The dying candle picked out in flame a withered cabbage rose under the
table; a baby's mitten, the letter written for the man who had died, the
Mexican's sombrero on a chair, the gilt sun and moon and stars on the
glass face of the grandfather clock by the window.

Duncan's head fell forward in his clasped arms on the table, and in his
dreams he heard the huntsman's silver horn from across the seas calling
him home to carry on the destiny of the ancient and honorable name which
was his. His "strike of pay ore" in his "land of gold."

The candle wick in a shallow pool of tallow flared high, and went out.

The old clock chimed twelve.

The Tom Bell Stronghold

II

"You smile, O poet, and what do you?
You lean from your window and watch life's column
Trampling and struggling through dust and dew,
Filled with its purposes grave and solemn;
An act, a gesture, a face - who knows?
And you pluck from your bosom the verse that grows,
And down it flies like my red, red rose,
And you sit and dream as away it goes,
And think that your duty is done - now, don't you?"

- Bret Harte.

In the early days it was called the Mountaineer House. Now it is
colloquially known as the "stone house," and has for sixty years been
the home of the Owen King family. It is surrounded today by one of the
most beautiful orchards in the foothills. Wide verandahs of the native
gray granite to match the old house itself have been added. It is
electrically lighted and furnace heated, modern in every way, yet still
the romance of former times seems to cling to its sturdy old walls.

All that remain unchanged are three huge trees flanking the highway in
front. What tales they could tell, if they would, of what passed by the
junction of two roads beneath them. Of the long and weary caravans from
across the plains crawling up from the bridge at Whiskey Bar, below
Rattlesnake, glad that their six months' struggle was nearly over: of
horsemen on beautiful Spanish horses riding furiously, whither no one
knew nor dared ask; of dark deeds in the old stone house below, that was
so inscrutably quiet by day and so mysteriously alive by night; of
ghastly doings by the Tom Bell gang which ranged all the way from the
Oregon border to the southern lakes.

They will never tell all they know - these big old trees - of those who
went in by the door and "came out by the cellar" of Tom Bell's
stronghold. In the end the place fell, in the war between order and
lawlessness and, as the pessimists love to assert, a woman, as usual,
was the cause of it. The tale is told:

Rosa Phillips sat in the Mountaineer House strumming a Spanish guitar,
and singing,

"There's a turned down page, as some writer says, in every human life,
A hidden story of happier days, of peace amidst the strife.
A folded down leaf which the world knows not. A love dream rudely crushed,
The sight of a face that is not forgot. Although the voice be hushed."

She rose and stood at a window, holding the dusty curtain aside with one
white hand and peering cautiously forth into the dusk. A horse was
galloping up the Folsom road. The horseman was near - was under the
trees in front - was past - and gone down the river road without
slackening his animal's rapid gait.

"He does not stop at the Mountaineer House these days," said Tom Bell's
sneering voice at her elbow. "There is a new actress at the opera house
in Rattlesnake."

The woman's dark eyes flashed, but she answered evenly enough:

"He does not stop, the handsome Dick, so you, senor, have not the cause
to be jealous. Is it not so?"

"Cause? Why, you Spanish jade, you've never been the same to me since
Rattlesnake Dick came prowling back from Shasta county to his old haunts
in Placer." Rosa's thin, red lips curled.

"Senor, I am what it pleases me to be."

"And Jack Phillips permits you to be!"

She shrugged her slender shoulders.

"He wearies me. Life - this place - wearies me."

"Yes, and I weary you, too - now. Plain as day, it is."

The Phillips woman smiled (she seldom laughed) and there was only
cruelty in her smile - no kindliness, no womanly softness of any sort.

"My friend, soon there will be no 'you.' The night is coming and there
will be no sunrise."

A man dismounted at the gate and led his horse past the window to the
stables in the cellar. He walked with a curious, halting pace.

"There's Jim Driscoll back already. Must bring news," said Bell, leaving
her hurriedly, and so neglecting to ask the meaning of her cryptic
remark.

Rosa slipped in behind the bar, late that evening, beautifully gowned,
and with her dark hair dressed high. Her vivid face glowed like a
scarlet poppy and was bright with smiles. Three or four men in the
crowded bar-room rose to their feet and drank to her bright eyes and
strolled across to the bar.

"Soon now' "she whispered, "I shall sweep out the lights. Those two who
have just entered - who are they?" She went across the room to the
newcomers. "The senors may pay me for the drinks, if they desire," she
said to them, meaningly.

"La Rosita shall take what pleases her," one of them laughed. Among the
handful of coins and small nuggets he brought from his pocket was a
bullet strung on a bit of dirty twine.

"Ah! a love token, senor?"

"Yes, from the throat of Betsy Jane" (a term often used for a rifle).

"In twenty minutes, my friends, there will be opened a chute into
purgatory for all who are in this bar room. Your 'love token' names you
Senor Bell's men. Before then you will seek the rear of the room - eh?"

She drifted away from them to pause at a small table where sat a young
man alone.

"And you, pretty fellow, you are new in California?"

"Yes, I landed in San Francisco only ten days ago." He was new indeed,
or he would have realized the danger of telling his business to the
first person who asked.

"You go far, senor?"

"Not now. I have come far, but my journey is near to a very happy
ending."

"So?"

"Yes. I have come to marry Miss Elena Ashley, at Auburn, to whom I have
been long betrothed."

She tapped her white teeth with her fan.

"And yet you linger at Mountaineer House?"

"Horses are expensive, and I am not rich. I walked. I was tired. I saw
you in your garden, and you are very beautiful."

Rosa's capricious vanity was touched. The whim seized her to save this
exuberant young bridegroom from the fate before him.

"Do you see that peddler - old Rosenthal - close to the bar? He brought
in a large and rich pack tonight. It lies in the next room. Do you go
there at once. I will come soon, and together we will select a gift for
your bride. Go quickly!"

She passed again behind the bar. Jack Phillips was at one end, lame Jim
Driscoll at the other, Tom Bell in the middle. Rosa paused near a
branching candelabra which had once graced the altar of a Spanish
church.

"Is Jose below?" whispered Bell. She nodded. "Why did you save that boy,
just now? A new lover?" She directed upon him a level glance of hate.

"I do what pleases me, senor." She raised her arm high, beginning the
first stamping measure of a Spanish dance. Instantly there was a curious
rumbling noise in the stable underneath. Rosa swept over the candelabra.
All the lights in the place were struck out. Phillips and Driscoll
slipped two great bolts, and the entire bar-room floor swung downward on
hinges.

The chute to purgatory was open!

There was bedlam in that dank pass to the region of shades, and no
quarter was shown to any man; only cries of "The String! The String!"
from members of the gang in order to distinguish the robbers from the
robbed, in the darkness. There were curses, the kicking and squealing of
horses in their stalls; a verse from the Talmud recited in Yiddish
(which suddenly stopped), and above it all the high and hysterical laugh
of a woman.

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