Books: Down the Mother Lode
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Vivia Hemphill >> Down the Mother Lode
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The old pier stands to this day, notwithstanding the fierce battering of
the floods of nearly seventy years; a monument enduring long after the
Digger Indians are gone off the face of the earth, as though to
commemmorate the power of the white race and that member of it who gave
up his life at its base.
Grizzley Bob of Snake Gulch
VI
"Be the battle lost or won,
Though its smoke shall hide the sun,
I shall find my love - the one
Born for me!"
- Bret Harte.
Names of settlements in the '49 days were often as "Rough an Ready" as
the reasons for their being!
Most of them spoke, more or less eloquently, for themselves and no man
picked by fame in glowing wise from the heterogeneous mass of persons
could hope to escape a nickname.
A miner was discovered roaming down a river bed minus his nether
garments, and lives to this day in the appellation of Shirt Tail canyon.
Two men fought. One of them lost an eye in the manner indicated by Gouge
Eye. Hundreds of wild geese were wont to gather on a sunny mesa above
the river. It made a splendid level town called Wild Goose Flat. The
plains were covered with "Antelope." The end gate of a prairie schooner
was lost on a hill, and Tail Gate mountain came into being.
Humbug Creek panned light with gold. Red Dog, Hangtown, Round Tent
Claims, Dry Diggings, Let 'Er Rip, You Bet, Yuba Dam, One Horse Town,
and Hell's Delight shriek for themselves, or should!
This, then, is the tale of Grizzley Bob, who mined in Snake Gulch at the
foot of Bear Mountain.
"The bear made straight for me! Old Bull-doze was hangin' onto him
below, somewhere, but I dropped my Killer (gun) and grabbed my knife,
'cause I knew if I didn't get in on him with Slasher it was all up with
both of us. Bear and I took a tight grip on each other and I hit
straight for his heart just as he gave me a swipe in the face.
"We both fell, the bear on top, and then I didn't remember anything for
awhile. When I woke I felt something heavy on my stomach, but I couldn't
see anything for blood."
"Hu-ray!" cheered old Solly Jake, thinking the tale was finished.
Sick Jimmy, from behind the bar, prodded him good-humoredly.
"Dry up, Soll."
"I am dry," whimpered old Soll, "I'm dryer'n before I got drunk!"
"Here, then," pushing a bottle across the redwood slab used for a bar,
"the drinks are on Grizzley Bob and Handsome Harry, tonight."
"Was it such a big strike they made?"
"It sure was. Go on, Bob," he called to the tall, magnificently built
young spokesman, "then what?"
"After awhile I managed to crawl from under that old grizzley and when
I'd wiped the one good eye that was left, I saw him lying there as stiff
and dead as a mackerel, with Slasher sticking in his heart clean up to
the handle. It was pretty near dark then, but the sun was just showing
hisself over the top of Bear mountain when I got to Rattlesnake Bill's
cabin, and you'll scarcely believe me but I didn't have enough grit left
to signal Bill I was there. I just settled down all of a heap-like and
that's the way they found me. Bill, he got a doctor from Angel's and
after awhile I pulled out all right, but I ain't been much of a beauty
since. Well, what th - ," as the door banged open to reveal an
exceedingly handsome blond youngster dragging in a cringing newcomer.
"Hi," he called, while two frolicsome imps danced in his splendid blue
eyes. "Any of you chaps got a rope handy? Time this fellow was strung up
over a limb to be a picture for coyotes to bark at!"
"Hall, you let go, there. There'll be no chaffing a tenderfoot whilst
I'm around and you know it."
"Who says so?" laughed Handsome Harry.
"My foppish friend," spoke up The Senator, "the reputation of Grizzley
Bob says so. A reputation that is the terror and admiration of every
mining camp in the mountains. A dead shot, a sure thing with the knife,
a heart to succor the oppressed and often to protect the shiftless,"
acridly.
"I thank you, Senator! Your species of implication is worthy the
splendor of your mighty apparel. The old swallow-tail retains its
pristine glory, I perceive, though your other habiliments have one by
one yielded to the ravages of time, and been replaced by the rough and
ready garments of the frontier. Perchance - "
"Hall, have I got to make you let go of this pore devil!" Bob's powerful
figure came forward into the full light of the huge fireplace. One-half
the face above the comely form was hideously repulsive. It had been
literally torn away and what remained was so scarred and seamed that it
scarcely bore any resemblance to a human countenance.
His one remaining eye was large, dark and glowing with kindness as he
bent over the victim of his partner's latest joke.
"Ye-ah," drawled old Doc Smithers, precipitating a large mouthful of
brown liquid into the fireplace. "Bob, he'll pet 'im, an' that ol'
bulldog o' his'n 'ull lick im, an' next thing we know Bob'll be givin'
'im a claim, just like he took in Handsome Harry hisself goin' on two
years ago. Look at the dandy, struttin'! Bob buys 'im all them fancy
togs an' loves to see 'im wearin' 'em. White hands, an' red cheeks, an'
straight nose like a gal. Swan, ef he wasn't so ornery an' long-limbed
I'd a mind to call 'im one. Ef 'twant for his hidin' behind Bob so,
I'd - "
What he'd have done was never known, for the whole room-full of
prankish, loud-voiced, roistering men was suddenly struck dumb by the
unwonted sound of a lady's voice out in the darkness.
Bull-doze reached her first, Bob next, and Handsome Harry third. She was
only a slip of a young thing and the fright she got from the kindly rush
of the old bulldog was immeasurably increased by Bob's frightful
caricature of a face. She turned, shuddering, to the handsome,
richly-decked young Englishman.
"My father and mother, sir, are very ill. I was going after a doctor,
but I am tired out. I can go no further. Oh, could one of you go on to
Angel's, whilst I rest with some lady of your town?"
Harry was apparently speechless from the thrall of her fresh young
beauty, because it was Bob who answered.
"You certainly can, Miss! Grizzley Bob's word on that. Where'd you come
from?"
"From Roundtree's, sir," timidly. Bob had turned to call orders through
the open door and the girl gasped as the strong, manly profile of the
unscarred half of his face was turned toward her. Bull-doze licked her
white fingers, and she stooped to pat his ugly head so that the long
curls at her temple might hide her face from the look in Hal's bold
eyes.
"Hey, Antelope Bill, saddle that ewe-necked cayuse of yours and vamoose,
pronto, after the doctor. Plug Hat Pete, you've got the best cabin in
town. We'll want it for the lady."
"Help yourself, Grizzley," answered the gambler. "It is a privilege."
"I am to stay with Mrs. - Pete?" asked Becky, anxiously.
"Child, you're a-going to be as safe as if there was a lady in this
law-evadin' camp; which there isn't, exceptin' your own sweet and lovely
self."
"Oh!"
"You're a-going to have old Bull-doze watchin' inside the cabin and ten
decent and sober men watchin' outside it and nothin' short of a
messenger from up-skies could touch one pretty, red-gold curl on your
proud little head."
"Bob, I'll take her home to her mother," spoke up Harry who had never
once taken his bold gaze from the girl.
"No, you won't take her home to her mother, neither!"
Beckey was strangely comforted by the protective drawl of the big man's
voice. Accustomed as she had grown to the rapid transitions of the West,
she realized the fallacy of her first impression from his appearance.
That night laid the foundation of her regard for him, which was deeper
than a mere surface appeal, and which was never to waver.
* * * * *
"H'm," snorted Cornish Jack, shuffling a greasy pack of cards in Sick
Jimmie's place and watching two men go by, "that's the most willin' pair
on the gulch! Bob, he's willin' to do all the work, an' Handsome Harry,
he's willin' to let 'im. Fine house Bob's just built. Must of cost a
heap."
"They say that Miss Beckey and her mother are going to live in it,"
answered Plug Hat Pete. "I'll raise you ten."
"Handsome Harry's bin a-dancin' round that gal ever since they moved
here, six months ago."
"Yes, and the look in her eyes in another direction, is plainly to be
read." The implication was lost on Cornish Jack.
"Ol' Bob, he does all he can to throw 'em together. Air ye goin' to the
house warmin' tonight?"
"Certainly," said The Senator. "Particularly if we manage to keep old
Tommy Norton and Black Joe from getting intoxicated, so there will be a
pair of fiddlers on the gulch. Tommy, on such occasions, always has an
attack of religion which precludes the possibility of his assisting at
any profane scene of mirth, and Joe falls into a deep sleep from which
nothing can rouse him for twenty-four hours."
"There's Antelope back. I hear his roan."
"Well, who do you think I met down around the curve of Blackjack Hill?
That gal o' Bob's on her pinto and that sneakin' Handsome Harry on his
black mustang, ridin' full-bent-for-leather!"
The men rushed with one accord to Bob's cabin, where he sat before his
fireless hearth.
"We al'ays knew he was a sneakin' thief, but you wouldn't hear nothin'
agin him. Took all the bags of gold dust from your claim, too, didn't
he?"
"Now, boys, that isn't fair to call him a thief. He was my partner and
what was mine was his, and a man has a right to take his own wherever he
finds it."
"But the gal?" asked a chorus of voices.
"That girl wasn't in any way bound to me, and you can't expect a pretty
creature like her to care for such a beauty as I am, when there's a
fellow like Handsome Harry around. It don't stand to reason."
"Come, fellows," said Poker Bill, "if Bob's satisfied I reckon we ought
to be. Time to get into our biled shirts for the house warmin', anyway."
"Sorry to disappoint you, boys, but there won't be a house warming. I
built it for them and they're gone. It'll stay locked till they come
again. This old cabin is good enough for me."
So they left him. Bob relit his pipe and settled back on his bench. Once
he roused a moment to mutter. "But they'd ought to know me better. They
needn't have run away from their best friend."
Soon after dark a pinto paced home through the quiet, mourning camp with
a very weary bulldog at her heels. Beckey slid from her side saddle and
crept to Bob's open door. By the light of a full moon she could see the
big lax figure in an attitude of utter despair.
"Bob!"
"You! Girl, I thought you'd gone."
"I went because - because I thought you'd come after me. I'd tried
everything else that a woman can do to make you understand * * * He's
begged me so many times to run off. When he understood, he was beastly.
He put me off the horse and told me to walk, then. It was the dog who
fought him, and then I ran for Pinto and came back." Her low voice
failed her, but she controlled herself, and went on, "I thought if I
pretended to go you'd see - "
"See! Girl, you've known ever since you came creeping into Snake Gulch
that night that you were the very heart and soul of me."
"Yes, yes," she sobbed, "that is not what I would have you know."
"You mean - no, I am a great fool. No woman could bring herself to - A
face like mine! Even if you did, it would be from gratitude. I could not
permit such a sacrifice," he finished, with a touch of pride.
The girl waited, then when he was silent she turned with a sob to go to
her mother's cabin. The soft footfalls died away. Bob stood motionless.
Suddenly a scream rang out on the still night air. Bulldoze scrambled
off the door-stone with a snarl of battle-rage and charged for the
sound, but he was easily outdistanced by the huge miner, who ran with
the lithe grace of an Indian. In an incredibly short time the little
form was safe in his arms.
"Oh, there's a terrible animal in the mining ditch. I heard it! It's
coming this way! A grizzley, I know!" Bob peered into the ditch.
"Why, girl, it's only drunken old Solly Jake going home holding his jug
out of the water. He gets into the ditch so he won't lose the way."
"But how does he know when to get out?"
"Well, when he bangs his head on the overbrace of the first flume, he
knows he's home and crawls out." Bob began gently to withdraw his arms.
If you let me go now," she whispered, "I'll wish that it had been a
grizzley."
"I must take you home."
'Oh, you have! I am home," clinging to him desperately, "I want no other
in the world than this one."
"But my scarred - "
The girl reached up, drawing down his tall, dark head in her arms. She
kissed his mutilated cheek, then pressed it tenderly against her soft,
bare throat. It did not stay long, as Bob felt that such kisess should
be returned without delay.
"Hu-ray," cheered Solly Jake, waving his whisky jug, "tale ended right!
Time f'r 'nother drink, boys!" and standing up to his middle in water he
proceeded to demonstrate his idea.
Curley Coppers the Jack
VII
"On Selby Flat we live in style;
We'll stay right here till we make our pile.
We're sure to do it after a while,
Then good-bye to Californy!"
-Canfield's "Diary of a Forty-Niner."
The beautiful Casino at Monte Carlo stands in one of the loveliest
settings on earth. Facing the blue Mediterranean and enhanced by the
exquisitely kept marble villas of Monaco, it may justly be called the
acme of gambling institutions. It has become an institution through the
years. Time has brought it stability.
Its absolute antithesis were the gambling dens of '49. Built over-night,
destined to remain if the mines were rich, and to melt away if they
pinched out, the gambling hells were sometimes the veriest makeshifts.
Canvas covered, dirt floored, except for the dancing platform, rough
red-wood bar and tables; surrounded by all the sordidness of Hurdy Gurdy
town in which fortunes, and reputations, and lives were bid, and
shuffled, and lost, as indiscriminately as grains of dust blown into the
ever-changing sea.
The thirst for gold is universal. In those half-mad days of delirious
seeking, the princeling rubbed sleeves with the scoundrel and the clod,
and each man's ability was his only protection. Fortune played no
favorites. The tale is told of the judge who drove home in his coach
through a shallow creek. Ruin faced him for the lack of a few thousand
dollars. He took out his derringer and shot himself.
Not half an hour later a Chinaman crossed the creek under his pole
between two swinging baskets. He found a nugget there which brought him
over $30,000.
This, then, is the tale of what Fortune did to Curly Gillmore.
* * * * *
"Whoop-ee! Ki-yi-ee hick-ee! Yi-ee-ee!"
"There comes Curly," said Teddy Karns," never altering the steady flow
of the whiskey he was pouring into a tin cup for Sailor Jack to drink.
"Made a big strike, I hear."
"Yea-ah. About $25,000, they say. Might be a million, the way the female
critters run," Ted laughed, as the hurdy-gurdy girls with shrieks of
laughter pounced upon the noisy newcomer.
"Well, hel-lo, Nance, and Liz, and Babe, and Bouncin' Bet, old gal! All
ready to help me sling it, ain't you? But where's little pale Alice?"
"Oh, Allie? She's back in the tents. Sick tonight. Awful bad, she's
took. She'll be shufflin' off 'fore long, an' rid o' mortal misery."
"Poor little soldier!"
"Sweet, she was, an' born to be good. Why, I remember (we came 'round
the Horn on the same sailin' vessel) that they wasn't a ailin' baby on
board but what Allie could get a smile out of it, nor a sick soul that
didn't bless 'er for 'er kindness an' care. Sick o' body, sick o' heart,
Allie did for 'em all, bless 'er."
"She was happy, then," put in Babe.
"Yes. Comin' out to Californy to 'er lover, she were, all her folks back
in the States bein' dead. She'd took care of 'er mother, last. 'Twas why
'er man came on ahead. An' when she got here - "
"Aw-w, Bet, don't you cry," said Babe. "Y' see, when we got here, Curly,
we found her boy'd been shot in a fight over a mine. Allie, she hadn't
no money left, and no gumption much, like Bet an' me, to fight her way,
so we took 'er along o' us. We tried to keep her the little lady that
she was, but - Well, we got snowed in last winter up on the divide an' -
Faro Sam - Well, it broke her pure heart, an' most Bet's an' mine, too.
An' she ain't never got over the cold she took, up there in the snow."
"Life's hard for a girl anyways you put it, an' she'll be happier over
the river where there ain't no cold nor sorrer. Bet! Aw-w, she'll sleep
on a finer bed nor you an' I could give 'er, an' wake happy, with
ever'one she loved best around her. She's layin' there so white an'
small an' still it'd most break your hear to see 'er. Like a little
snowdrop you've picked, an' worn, an' slung away. So gentle - "
"Well, what's this, anyway? A wake?" broke in Faro Sam's icy voice. "Do
I hire fiddlers to play a funeral dirge? Get on with you," scattering
the girls in the direction of the card tables and the dancing platform.
"Which ones do you want, Curly?"
"I want Babe and Betsy. Where's that little pale printer's devil, the
one they call the gambler's ghost? I know Sam won't let you girls leave
here."
"He's workin' up on the paper, I guess. They ran out of coal oil and had
to fire up with pine knots."
"He's comin, now. He ain't no gambler's ghost tonight, though; he's pot
black!"
"Ghost," said Curly, "you take this around to Allie." It was a $50
octagonal slug.
"Yessir."
"And you say that there's more, all she wants, where that comes from."
"Yessir."
Then, shaking his mop of brown, curly hair as though to relieve his head
of a burden, he took the girls for what he felt was a much-needed round
of drinks.
By midnight the place was wild!
"Sam," shouted Curly, "what's the limit on your pesky old game?"
"The ceiling's the limit."
"Well, I'll put up one bet! Bein' on Easy Street I was goin' back to the
States to marry my girl, but I'm blamed if I don't put up my swag for
one turn of the cards."
He sent for his "dust," and piled the long, buckskin bags criss-cross
before Faro Sam's table.
"I'll copper the jack, gentlemen," he shouted. "All on the jack!"
Teddy Karn's face turned a pasty hue, and the tip of his tongue slid
along his puffed lips, but the lines of Faro Sam's face never changed,
and his eyes retained the blank impassivity of a snake's as he slipped
his cards. There was a sudden, tense silence. The girls pressed forward
with hurried breathing and the men waited, rigid as stones.
Somebody's mongrel paced to the middle of the platform and scratched for
fleas, with soft thumping on the floor. That was all.
Suddenly a man swore! A woman's voice shrilled hysterically! Faro Sam
rose to his feet ceremoniously. "The house is yours."
"By Jinks!" yelled Curly, "I've coppered the jack! I've broken the bank!
I've - "
One of the doors swung open quietly. Silence dropped once more, with the
speed of tropical night, upon the blare of the place.
The gambler's ghost stood there silhouetted against the light from a log
fire outside. There were pink streaks down his dirty face, washed by
tears, and his young shoulders drooped woefully. The dog came forward
and licked his twitching fingers.
"Allie is dead," he whispered.
"Curly, I should like to apply for the position of dealer over at your
place, which yesterday was my place," said Faro Sam, next day at noon,
meeting Curly on the street.
"Sure, you can have it, Sam. Too bad it's the custom for the house to
go, too, when somebody breaks the bank. I've turned it over to George
Spellman, with a thousand to start with. He and I come from the same
place back in the States. Great friends we were, till we both got to
sparkin' the same girl. When she took me, George, he got pretty ornery,
but I guess he's all over it by this time. I'm goin' home to marry her,
now.
"I've just been around to the tents seein' about little Allie's funeral,
an' he'll keep on the girls, too. I'm pullin' my freight for Hangtown
(Placerville). This town's a little too small for a fellow of my means."
Faro Sam looked after him with a cynical light in his narrow eyes.
"The pot bubbles loudest when the water's nearest the bottom," he
muttered, and turned to pick a fastidious way through the mud.
Life that night in the gambling hell went on much as usual. Teddy Karns
"poured the rye," and Faro Sam "slipped the cards," whilst Babe worried
over Bouncing Bet's intoxicated condition.
"It's Allie, you know," Babe confided to Red Shirt Pete at midnight.
"She took it awful hard, and Spellman, the new boss, wouldn't let 'er
off tonight. I bin tellin' 'er Allie's better off, but she won't listen
to nobody. She's just bin pourin' 'em down all evenin'. What's that?" at
a loud banging on the doors. Some one opened them and Curly rode into
the place on the handsome horse he had bought that morning.
"Well, boys, I'm cleaned! Tried to copper the jack in Hangtown and the
whole $50,000 went. George, I'll be askin' for this place back, I
guess."
"This place belongs to me, Curly Gillmore."
"Who says so?"
'This old lady says so," covering him with his pistol.
Curly laughed, not too musically. "Well, boys, what am I bid for this
horse? I need a grubstake."
"Play you for him," said Faro Sam, laconically.
"Done," said Curly. A moment later he laughed once more and swung down
off the Spanish thoroughbred. "He's yours. Well, good-night, boys."
No one answered. He had, like Hadji the beggar, become in twenty-four
hours again a drifter.
Babe sneaked out after him. "Here, Curly," she slipped her hand into her
bosom and held out the octagonal slug. "When Bet an' I reached Allie
last night she was holdin' it in her little dead hand, an' there was
such a smile on her face! You gave her that happy smile. God bless you
for it! Now, you take this - "
But Curly turned away, blinking his eyes, and trying to swallow the lump
in his throat. Babe stood watching him through her tears as he tramped
down the street, out of the town on the road to the south.
* * * * *
Two years later in a hall in Sonora, a man strolled in to the card
tables.
"Why, hel-lo, Curly!"
Curly glanced up briefly. "Hello, George."
"Hear you've made another strike."
"You can hear a lot that ain't true. This happens to be."
"You know, I was telling - "
"Well, the sight of you don't put me in the mood to be told much." There
was an imperceptible shifting of the crowd around the table. They were
moving away from Spellman.
"I was telling my wife - "
"My girl, you mean! It wasn't enough to keep my business, you had to go
home an' marry my girl, too, didn't you?"
"Curly, for the love of heaven - "
"Take your hand off my arm, Pete. I'm going to kill this - -. He's not
the kind of man I thought he was."
Two shots crashed in the room!
Spellman wavered through the smoke haze, then dropped his pistol and
fell slowly across the card table littered with shining cards and poker
chips. An overturned tallow-dip dropped in a pool of wine and rolled
down against the dead man's cheek, dabbling it with the color which
would never return to it again.
* * * * *
"Bet, ain't that Curly Gillmore that we knew three years ago at Coloma,
when Allie died?"
"Must be a-gittin' blind! Where?"
"The feller all dressed up an' walkin' with the lady. Sure it is! Hi,
Curly, hel-lo! It's Babe. Well, ain't I glad - "
The woman with Curly fixed Babe with a stony glare. "If you wish to
converse with this ... woman, kindly do so when your wife is not
accompanying you," she said to him in an angry undertone, and went
majestically on.
"I'll come back, Babe. We've been married just a month and she doesn't
understand. I'll be back later," and he hurried off.
"Bet, did you see who that was with Curly? His wife, he said."
"Aw-w, Babe, don't you fret! I guess we fill our little place out here
in Californy near as much as some o' the fine ladies do."
"I didn't care. No, I was thinkin' that the ways o' the Lord are
curi-us. That lady used to be married to George Spellman."
"An' Curly shot him, down at Sonora, last year!"
"Ye-aw."
"Well, I'll be - ."
The Race of the Shoestring Gamblers
VIII
"Judge not too idly that our toils are mean,
Though no new levies marshall on our green;
Nor deem too rashly that our gains are small,
Weighed with the prizes for which heroes fall."
- Bret Harte.
If dancing was the first form of amusement to emanate from prehistoric
savagery, then racing must surely have come next. It may possibly have
come first. However, we shall leave the "theorizin"' to be settled by
the lips of the first mummy whose centuries-old tissues shall be roused
to full life by modern science. What has science not achieved? We have
gone beyond wonder. We can only believe, and become blase!
Meantime there is still enough red blood in the modern effete
productions of humans to enjoy a contest of stress and strain, and brain
and brawn, and to gamble upon the outcome.
In the '49 days, racing was one of the most popular forms of chance, and
it often reverted in bizarre tangents. This, then, is what happened at a
golden fiesta during the week of races:
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