Books: Down the Mother Lode
V >>
Vivia Hemphill >> Down the Mother Lode
Pages:
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6
The others had come up by this time and we sat in a circle listening
again to the story of the bold and brilliant Englishman whom two
undeserved jail sentences had turned into such a picturesque dare-devil
of a highwayman. However, I disagreed with Otto's version of the robber
chief.
"But you have made him out all bad," I told him. "I have heard the story
often, and he wasn't all bad by any means."
"He was a wild desperado. Why, even after he was dead and lying on the
sidewalk in Auburn, a man came up and kicked his face."
"Yes, and they say that everybody in the county was mad about it, and
when the man ran for supervisor more than a year later, no decent person
would vote for him and he lost his election." Now, the true story of
Rattlesnake Dick is this, and I never tire of hearing it:
"Would you present me to your sister's friend, then, George?"
"Why not."
"I am an Ishmailite! I, the son of an honorable English gentleman, have
done a term in prison."
"But these ideas are extreme, Dick. There is no such general opinion of
you. Were you not exonerated from having stolen the wretched little
Jew's goods? It is all forgotten," and George Taylor paused in his
restless pacing, before the long, graceful figure on the bunk against
the wall. Dick raised handsome eyes whose flashing light was made of
pain.
"George, I wish - how I wish that it were forgotten. But it is not. They
whisper it in doorways, and over the card tables and down in the drift
tunnels. Wherever I go it follows me like an evil spirit, rearing its
unclean head between me and all fair things." His deep voice reflected
the hurt in his dark eyes, and his broad shoulders drooped in
despondency.
"Dick - Dick, the gay the debonair - this is not like you. Brace up,
man, and come with me to this opening of the new opera house, if only to
add to my pleasure. All the town will be there to hear the singer who
has just landed in San Francisco from Boston."
"She it was who brought you the letter from your sister?"
"Yes, yes. They were school-mates. She is beautiful, and you shall meet
her after the concert."
The "Opera House" was crowded, the front rows seating the leading men of
the community and their richly clad wives and daughters. In the back
rows, seated on benches and around the side walls were, the roughly
dressed miners and the usual flotsam of a mining town. The singer was
not of the hurdy-gurdy type so common in those days, but a "lady,"
young, lovely and accomplished. Her ballads were greeted with the
greatest enthusiasm, and soon the stage began to be showered with gold.
The miners brought her back again and again, calling the names of songs
they wished to hear. Hundreds of dollars of gold were tossed up to her,
whilst she smilingly complied with all their requests.
"One more," they shouted, "only one more, and her slippers shall be
filled with gold dust." She slipped out of her little sandals and stood,
blushing modestly, hiding her silken feet under her long, wide skirts.
"You are very kind to a lonely stranger," she called, to an instantly
silenced audience, "and I will sing for you a song which has but lately
come from London. 'Tis from a new opera called the Bohemian Girl,
composed by Master Balfe," and folding her little hands before her, she
sang sweetly, "Then You'll Remember Me."
"When other lips and other hearts their tales of love shall tell
Of days that have as happy been, and you'll remember - you'll remember
me."
"Dick, why do you cover your eyes? You are surely not asleep?"
"By all the Gods, man, the accusation is an insult," with a haughty
flash of his great eyes.
"You are to be presented; have you forgotten?"
"Forgotten! While life lasts, I shall remember this night."
"Hush, this is the last. She is singing, "Home, Sweet Home'."
"Yes, 'Home,' for these wanderers from all over the earth. See how
silently they file out."
"There is many a tear among them. They will lie, tonight on memory's
couch of sad dreams."
"You are wrong, my friend," said Dick bitterly; "they are more like to
hasten down to the gambling hells to kill the visions memory would
recall."
* * * * *
"Sweet Bird, you cannot believe this thing of me!" The Singer-Lady
raised her bright head from Dick's shoulder, and met, steadfastly, his
passionately adoring eyes.
"Richard, how can you for one moment doubt me? I know you to be good and
true. Were you not exonerated from the last accusation of which you
informed me before you asked for my hand in marriage. And do we not know
that this man is actuated by the motive of jealousy ?"
"The Mormon beast! He knows well that I did not steal his mule."
"No' naughty boy," tapping him playfully with her fan, "'Twas something
else you stole from Master Crow the woman he wanted. Often have I
noticed on the streets how all women, every one, turn to look after
you."
"I cared not for her." He shook his tall and beautiful head, impatient
of the silky black lock which fell across his forehead.
"Perhaps then 'tis your magnificent carriage they would admire," laughed
the girl, teasingly.
Dick swept her close to his heart. "My golden-throated dove, I cannot
join in your sweet laughter, for I have a boding heart, this day. I have
enemies. They will use my past record. The courts are new, and judgments
swift and cold. If they should send me again to the penitentiary I - "
"Dearest I should know you to be innocent, and I should wait for you."
He kissed her tenderly on cheeks, and eyes, and mouth. He took her hands
from his shoulders, slipping off the little silken mitts and putting
them in an inner pocket, and kissed the soft, pink palms.
"Ah, Lady-Bird, if I should not return you'll remember me?"
"Always."
"My own pure love! No breath of shame shall ever sully your fair name
through me."
"Right well I know that, Richard. God bless you. I will pray for you
every hour."
At evening George Taylor brought her a note from Dick.
"Oh, George," she wailed, "they have sentenced him?"
"Two years in prison."
"But he was innocent!"
"Yes, and some day it will be proven." He looked at her strangely, "I
must tell you - Dick has broken jail and fled north to Shasta county,
where he will begin life anew. Then, if you still wish it, he will come
to you."
* * * * *
After four years the Singer-Lady returned for a concert at the little
Opera House in Rattlesnake. She went to her old quarters at the Widow
Miller's, on the edge of town.
"Eh, Dearie," cried the good woman, "what have they been doing to ye, so
to dim your bright youth, and to bring the sad lines to your mouth?"
"Mrs. Miller, where is he?"
"Ah - so that's the answer." The girl's eyes filled with tears.
"Four years - and for the last two, no word. I must find George Taylor.
Perhaps he - "
"Dearie, George Taylor is with Dick, and the Skinners and Cherokee Bob
and Lame Jim Driscoll. They say, too, that at times Dick rides with Tom
Bell's gang."
"Ah, he tried with all a strong man's power to win a new name for
himself - and for you - but Fate was too strong. His false record
followed him up and down the state from every idle throat, casting a
blight over all he sought to, do. Every sheriff hounded him on. Each
unproven crime was laid at his door."
"But why did he not come to me? Oh, he had my whole heart, and he knew
it."
"He did come to you two years ago, to ask if you would return to Canada
with him, hoping that it was too far for tales from California to
travel. As soon as he reached San Francisco he was recognized by one of
the authorities and 'shown up' by the Vigilante Committee in the Plaza,
as they put up all dangerous characters for the police and the people to
see.
"And whilst he was there you passed, walking with another man, and
looked him in the eyes and knew him not. 'Twas that which broke his
heart and made him the reckless and brilliant devil that he is today."
"But - but," cried the Singer-Lady, recovering from the daze these words
had placed upon her, "I did not pass. Oh, I should have fallen at his
feet - lost to all maidenly reserve - there before the people. It must
have been my sister, who had but lately come from Boston and so would
not know him," and she broke into uncontrollable weeping.
"There, child, dry your tears. Try to be brave. You care for him still?"
"Always. I have never ceased to pray for him. If I cannot become his, I
shall go lonely to my grave. Tell me everything, kind Mrs. Miller."
"He robs the stages of the Wells-Fargo box, but lets the passengers go
free, and he has never been known to take anything from a woman. He
says that since all the world is against him, his hand is against the
world.
"His den is now at Folsom, they say, but he ranges far afield. He robs
the sluices, and the bullion trains, but he does not take horses or
mules except to get away with his booty. No cell can hold him. He has
escaped from every jail in the northern mines. He has been known to say,
'I shall never rot in a prison as long as a revolver can keep me out."'
"Oh, would he - "
"He would, indeed, Dearie, for the sake of his family name and the love
he bears you. His last big raid was upon George Barstow's Wells-Fargo
train from Yreka. They held them up on Trinity Mountain. Eighty thousand
dollars in bullion, they got, even with twenty men guarding it."
Mrs. Miller tiptoed to the window and looked out. Coming back to the
girl she whispered, "The guards are tied to trees, and the gang is
waiting for Dick and Cy Skinner to get back with new mules, as the
Wells-Fargo mules all are branded and would give them away, but if he
finds out that you are here he may - "
The Singer-Lady sprang to her feet! From the trees behind the house
floated a snatch of song in a clear baritone.
"When coldness or deceit shall slight the beauty now they prize;
When hollow hearts shall wear a mask, 'twill break your own to see.
At such a moment I but ask that you'll remember me, you'll - "
By this time the girl was sobbing in Dick's arms, and the
misunderstandings of four years were soon explained.
The Singer-Lady lifted her head at last to the sound of galloping
horses. Dick was looking calmly in their direction. Terror seized her.
"What is that?"
"You must return to the house. They must not see you here."
She clung to him with the wail of a breaking heart.
"It is the sheriff and his deputies. This morning George and I were on
the Folsom stage. We were stopped by a deputy sheriff and sternly
requested to alight. We entered into conversation with the gentleman of
the law - whom I had met several times before" (with a grim smile), "and
finally George, with due deference to authority, demanded to be shown
the warrant for our arrest.
"Whilst the simple creature was fumbling for it, we opened fire and,
springing from the top of the stage, escaped across Harmon Hill. The
vain fellow carried only a derringer, and how was one little bullet to
stop our race for liberty."
"Yet you returned here! That was madness."
"I heard of you and the longing to see you once more overcame every
other feeling."
"Do not fear, I knew that they would come. What was that to pay for the
chance of seeing you again. They can but put me in Auburn jail, and no
locks can hold me except the shining ones on this dear head. No prison
can keep me till I am laid in that last one beneath the grass, and there
I will wait for you dear love. I shall not hear the celestian singing
till your sweet voice has joined the angel choir, and your two hands -
see, I still carry the little mitts - shall open the door for me to
Paradise, as they have held all of heaven for me on earth.
"It may be in that last court, the Great judge of all will look into my
heart which strove to be honorable and will dismiss the accusations of
mere, mortal man."
* * * * *
As usual, Dick escaped the jail and with George Taylor attempted to get
away, but Fate had dealt him her last blow and on the scroll of his
precarious and bitter life had written finis. A mile above Auburn they
were overtaken by Assessor George W. Martin and Deputy Sheriffs Crutcher
and Johnston. In the terrible encounter which ensued Martin was
instantly killed and Dick mortally wounded.
They rode more than a mile at a furious pace, from the scene of his last
fight, before Dick lay down to die. George put him on his great riding
cloak and spread a saddle blanket over him. Then when he read a fresh
command in the highwayman's dark eyes he faltered.
"Dick, old friend - I cannot."
"I am shot through the breast, and again through the side. You promised
that when I came to this pass, you would grant the liberation I seek in
death."
"I cannot. From any hand but mine may you find release."
"Very well" answered Dick, resolutely, "my own hand shall be given the
power to save my immortal soul." He wrote laboriously on a bit of
paper, "Rattlesnake Dick dies but never surrenders, as all true Britons
do."
"Go, George," he said gently, "but first give me my pistol. I have in
my pocket here a letter from the sweetest of women. It says, 'I have
grieved but never despaired, for I have prayed to the Father that he
would restore you to the paths of rectitude, and I say faithfully, He
will save you. He sees in your heart a secret wish to be a better man.
'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all things shall be added
thereunto.' He will raise your head and make of you a new man'! I go to
Him, my brother." And, raising his gun, with a good woman's adored name
on his lips, he released his sorely tried heart from bondage into the
unknown.
Indian Vengeance
V
"Those brave old bricks of forty-nine!
What lives they lived! What deaths they died!
Their ghosts are many. Let them keep
Their vast possessions. The Piute,
The tawny warrior, will dispute
No boundary with these . . . . . . . . .
- Joaquin Miller.
High water on the American came, usually, when the first warm rains
melted the snow on the mountains.
The placer miners toiled at furious pace all during the summer and fall.
The water, then not more than a rivulet, was deflected through flumes
from the river bed, so that all the sand of the bars could be put
through the sluices.
The men worked till the last possible moment in the narrow river bed,
only leaving in time to save their lives, and abandoning everything to
the sudden rush of the water. Their sluices, logs, flumes, water-wheels,
all their mining paraphernalia, sometimes even their living outfits,
were swept away in the floods.
The river was known to rise from 20 to 60 feet in 24 hours, in its
narrow and precipitous walls.
At flood time, then, we often went down to the river through the orchard
of big old cherry trees planted by my grandfather, to watch the mass of
wreckage rushing by. Great logs would go down end over end; mining
machinery caught in the limbs of uprooted trees; quantities of lumber,
and once a miner's bunk with sodden gray blanket and a wet and frantic
squirrel upon it. I worried for days over the fate of that squirrel.
They tell the story of a Chinaman floating down upon a log.
"Hello, John, where you go?" was shouted. John shook his head, sadly.
"Me no sabe! Maybe Saclimento - maybe San Flancisco. No got time talkee,
now."
* * * * *
"Look, the water is up to the top of the old stone pier," said one of
the others.
"Mammy Kate's 'ghost' would have a hard time haunting it now," I
laughed. "He'd be under twenty feet of water."
"What ghost?"
"Why, the tollkeeper's, of the old bridge. The one who hated the Indians
so."
"The Bear River tribe?"
"They were Diggers, but I think that nobody knew exactly which ones were
guilty. It was a fine bridge, the first suspension bridge in Placer
county."
"It was washed away in the floods during the winter of '61 and '62,
wasn't it?"
"Yes and they built the new one a mile up the river at Rattlesnake Bar,
where it still hangs."
"What about the tollkeeper?"
Here is the story - with a bit of a prologue.
* * * * *
Captain Ezekiel Merritt, one of the "Bear Flag" party in Sonoma, came in
'49 to try his luck at mining on the Middle Fork of the American. His
party came at last, through a deep canyon to a large bar on which they
found among unmistakable evidences of a plundered camp both white man's
and Indian's hair. A great ash heap containing calcined bones was
undoubtedly the funeral pyre of white men and red men alike, and some
yelling savages upon the upper bluff confirmed the tragedy which Captain
Merritt's party had been too late to avert.
They drove the Indians away and Captain Merritt cut into the bark of an
alder the name "Murderer's Bar," by which the place has been called ever
since.
The Merritt party stayed to work the bar. Before the summer passed the
river swarmed with men, some of whom joined forces to make up mining
companies. One of the rules of such a company: "Any shareholder getting
drunk during the time he should be on duty, shall pay into the common
treasury of the company a fine of one ounce of gold dust and shall
forfeit all dividends during such time." These fines, in some instances,
became so frequent as to cause a total disruption of the company.
The Indians returned to their villages in the hills. The foothill
Indians were not a particularly intelligent lot. They were Diggers, so
named on account of their habits of digging in the ground for roots, and
the larva of various insects for food. Eggs of ants, and the maggots
found in wasp's nests were considered great delicacies.
They also ate dried grasshoppers and young clover plants cooked as
greens. They ground acorns and manzanita berries into meal with the
stone mortars and pestles so commonly found through the countryside and
gathered and stored great caches of pine burrs full of nuts for the
winter. They were not as a rule quarrelsome, but - .
* * * * *
"Good morning, Phineas. I have brought your grub from Auburn, and here
is the bill."
It was a bright day in June and Phineas Longley, tollkeeper for the new
suspension bridge on Whiskey Bar, had had a busy morning. There was a
barbecue that day at the town on the other side, and a stream of people
had come down the Whiskey Bar turnpike and crossed the bridge. It was
getting warm and he was tired, and he read the bill gloomily:
"1 bottle gin, $6.00; 2 lbs. biscuits, $2.50; 1 ham, $24.00; 1 bottle
pickles, $6.00; 4 fathoms rope, $5.00; 1 watermelon, $4.00; 1 tin pan,
$16.00; 2 apples, $3.00."
Longley stuffed the bill in his pocket, and returned for his noon meal
to his log cabin on shore.
It was quite palatial - boasting a real floor made of puncheons, or hewn
logs. A bunk, against the wall, was made of a second log set four feet
from the log wall, with a hammock mattress of sacking stuffed with dried
bracken stretched between them. There was the usual huge fireplace of
granite rocks used for both warmth and cooking, and a box
pantry-cupboard nailed to the wall.
His cup and plate and saucer were of tin, and his cutlery was an iron
spoon, a three-tined fork and a hunting dagger. The dishes had not been
washed for weeks.
In warm weather he kept a few things in a small palisade driven in the
shallow water at the river 's edge, which was cool the year 'round.
Longley put his raised bread dough in a frying pan, put a second pan on
top, raked the ashes off some coals, and started it baking. A man on
horseback, driving two pack animals before him, stopped at the low
doorway.
"Hello, John! Glad to see you," called Longley.
"Glad to get here. Like to sleep in a house again. Tired of shaking the
lizards out of my blankets every morning."
"Ever shake out a rattler?"
"Not yet, though they say it's been done more than once."
"You're just in time. Turn the beasts into the corral. And then will you
just ride back to Kitty Douglas' for me? She promised me a pie, and I
need a new starter for my sour dough (batter). By that time everything
will be ready to eat."
"You mean the 'Kitty Douglas' of the signs I've just passed?" asked
John, grinning.
"Yes. What were they, today?"
"'Fresh pies, by Kitty Douglas,' 'Bread made every day, by Kitty
Douglas,' 'New-laid eggs every day, by Kitty Douglas'!"
"Kitty's cooking is as fair as the reputation of her house is not. She
charges two dollars for a meal of pork and beans."
"'Tis the regular price everywhere. I'll be back soon." After the meal
John went to, the barbecue, imbibing rather freely of the fire-water
barrel and making a night of it.
Heavy travel continued over the bridge all afternoon - a prairie
schooner with three oxen, two mules and a bronco pulling it; a
prospector in his red flannel undershirt, driving a laden donkey; a
hurdy-gurdy troupe on its way to the barbecue; a stage-coach drawn by
six half-broken wild horses; an old Spanish settler on a beautiful,
black thoroughbred; a late arrival from Oregon, mounted upon a sturdy
mule with his young wife upon a pillion behind him, and a whole drove of
China-men being taken out to work a white man's claim up on the Divide.
There passed Welch miners, who were to be the fore-runners of quartz
mining; miners from Australia, who were to replace the wooden "bateas"
of the Mexicans with the rocker and the iron gold-pan, and the term of
"specimen" with "nugget."
Finally came a hale, old voyaguer whom Longley greeted heartily as he
swung open the toll gate:
"Greetings, Monsieur Francois Gendron, and from whence came you today?"
The big Frenchman handed over the "six-bits" toll for himself and his
horse.
"From New Helvetia."
"Ah - Sacramento."
"And I am bound for the North Fork Dry Diggings."
"Auburn?" smiled Longley.
"Bah! the new names! In my day we called them differently. I came across
the Rockies in '32, Monsieur. But I must be en route - here are sheep
coming."
After the sheep were counted and gone, Longley glanced scowlingly across
the bridge and hastily closed the tollgate. A band of Indians, several
on ponies but most of them on foot, crossed the bridge and halted before
him.
"Go back, ye varmints!" growled Longley.
"No Indian pay," said the old chief. "He go the bridge and the road - no
pay."
"Well, the Chinamen paid."
"But the Indians, no! No pay. Me go Whiskey Bar - big pow-wow. Plenty
ox, plenty bear meat, plenty firewater - "
"You go back!" roared the tollkeeper, swearing, "and go ford the river.
That's good enough for a Digger! The ferry's been taken off, but the
water is not so high."
The old Indian scowled, and the young bucks began a guttural complaint
which he silenced with a gesture and a grunt of command.
"Water is cold, and those," pointing to the sheep, "have passed."
"You go back, I tell you! I hate every filthy brute of you! My best pal
was sent to glory in that funeral fire on Murderer's Bar, and no Indian
will ever get aught from me."
"Me pay," said the Indian leader slowly, "Me pay cayuse, me pay boy."
"No, you won't pay! You'll go back and wade the river like the low
beasts that you are."
The chief began a fierce oration. Longley ran into the tollhouse and
came out with a sawed-off shotgun.
"Now, will you go?" he cried, defiantly.
The Indians were sober, and they went. As they came abreast of the pier
under the bridge the toll-keeper jeered and laughed at them, and pelted
them with rocks.
They looked up with hate, but went stolidly on their way.
With darkness, the roistering at the barbecue became louder. The
Indians' money was gone by this time, and the fun was getting rougher.
The toll-keeper, after a weary day, was dozing beside his candle. He did
not see nor hear the stealthy forms which crept up the bridge. A board
creaked, and he jumped up and swung about, to find himself quickly
overpowered by a dozen lithe redskins.
They robbed the till, then held a palaver as to the disposition of their
prisoner. They finally left him tied with his own new rope to a huge
drift log at the base of the pier, and went back to buy more firewater.
It was a wild night!
John noticed, very late, that the Indians seemed to be having a special
pow-wow of their own on the river bank near the bridge. There was a
great fire, and mad dancing and war whooping. He started toward them.
"Don't go there, pardner," called an old trapper. "Them bucks is crazy
with drink, an' if I knows anything about Injuns, it won't be no safe
place for a white man."
So passed Longley's last chance for his life! His cries for aid were
mingled with the savage whoops of his ferocious enemies. Even the people
living across the river who heard his continued shouts, took them to be
part of the celebration.
Maddened by drink and by the ever mounting excitement of their
incantations, one of the most ghastly deeds ever perpetrated by Indians
upon the whole river was finished before daylight.
The condition of Longley's body upon its discovery roused the entire
settlement, but the Indians had vanished over the hills and across Bear
river. The chief had gone home at sundown, and it was as impossible to
find those who were on the bar that night, as to distinguish one grain
of sand from another.
Pages:
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6