University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
THE FINGER-BOARD OF FATE.

I NOW stood face to face with the outposts
of the great events of my life. Here were the
tawny people with whom I was to mingle.
There loomed Mount Shasta, with which my name,
if remembered at all, will be remembered. I had
not sought this. I did not dream even then that
I should mix with these people, or linger longer
here in the shadows of Shasta than I had lingered
in camps before.

I visited many of the Indian villages, where I
received nothing but kindness and hospitality. They
had never before seen so young a white man. The
Indian mothers were particularly kind. My tattered
clothes were replaced by soft brown buckskins, which
they almost forced me to accept. I was not only
told that I was welcome, and that they were glad
to see me, but I was made to feel that this was
the case. Their men were manly, tall, graceful.
Their women were beautiful in their wild and

natural, simple and savage beauty beyond anything
I have since seen, and I have gone well-nigh the circuit
of the earth since I first pitched camp at the base
of Shasta.

I came to sympathize thoroughly with the Indians.
Perhaps, if I had been in a pleasant home, had friends,
or even had the strength of will and capacity to lay
hold of the world, and enter the conflict successfully,
I might have thought much as others thought, and
done as others have done; but I was a gipsy, and
had no home. I did not fear or shun toil, but I despised
the treachery, falsehood, and villany, practised
in the struggle for wealth, and kept as well out of it
as I could.

All these old ideas of mine seem very singular now
for one so young. Yet it appears to me I always had
them; may be, I was born with a nature that did
not fit into the moulds of other minds. At all events,
I began to think very early for myself, and nearly
always as incorrectly as possible. Even at the time
mentioned I had some of the thoughts of a man; and
at the present time, perhaps, I have many of the
thoughts of a child. My life on horseback and among
herds from the time I was old enough to ride a horse,
had made me even still more thoughtful and solitary
than was my nature, so that on some things I thought
a great deal, or rather observed, while on others—
practical things—I never bestowed a moment's time.

I had never been a boy, that is, an orthodox, old-fashioned
boy, for I never played in my life. Games
of ball, marbles, and the like, are to me still mysterious
as the rites in a Pagan temple. I then knew
nothing at all of men. Cattle and horses I understand
thoroughly. But somehow I could not understand
or get on with my fellow man. He seemed to
always want to cheat me—to get my labour for
nothing. I could appreciate and enter into the heart
of an Indian. Perhaps it was because he was natural;
a child of nature; nearer to God than the white man.
I think what I most needed in order to understand,
get on and not be misunderstood, was a long time at
school, where my rough points could be ground down.
The schoolmaster should have taken me between his
thumb and finger and rubbed me about till I was as
smooth and as round as the others. Then I should
have been put out in the society of other smooth
pebbles, and rubbed and ground against them till I
got as smooth and pointless as they. You must not
have points or anything about you singular or noticeable
if you would get on. You must be a pebble, a
smooth, quiet pebble. Be a big pebble if you can, a
small pebble if you must. But be a pebble just like
the rest, cold, and hard, and sleek, and smooth, and
you are all right. But I was as rough as the lava
rocks I roamed over, as broken as the mountains I inhabited;
neither a man nor a boy.

How I am running on about myself, and yet how
pleasant is this forbidden fruit! The world says you
must not talk of yourself. The world is a tyrant.
The world no sooner discovered that the most delightful
of all things was the pleasure of talking about
one's self, even more delightful than talking about
one's neighbour, than straightway the world, with
the wits to back it, pronounced against the use of
this luxury.

Who knows but it is a sort of desire for revenge
against mankind for forbidding us to talk as much as
we like about ourselves, that makes us so turn upon
and talk about our neighbours.

Be that as it may, I know very well that if all
men were permitted to talk about themselves as
much as they liked, they would not talk so much
about their neighbors. They would not have time.

Even ages ago, whenever any man dared come out
and talk freely, naturally and fully as he desired
about himself, the wits nailed him to the wall with
their shafts of irony, until the last man was driven
from the green and leafy Eden of egotism, and no
one has yet had courage to attempt to retake it.

Now I like this great big letter “I,” standing out
boldly alone like a soldier at his post. It is a sort
of granite pillar, it seems to me, set up at each mile,
even every quarter if you like, to face you, to be
familiar, to talk to you as you proceed, without an

interpreter or the intervention of a third party.

Modest Cæsar! The man who writes of a third
person when he means the first is a falsehood. The
man who says “we” when he means “I,” is a coward,
and afraid to go alone. He winces before the wits,
and takes shelter behind the back of another person.
I would rather see a man stand up like Homer's
heroes, or a North American Indian, and tell all his
deeds of valour and the deeds of all his ancestors
even back to the tenth generation, than this.

I despise this contemptible little wishy-washy
editorial “we.” The truth is, it is ten times more
pompous than the bold naked soldier-like “I.”
Besides, it has the disadvantage of being a falsehood;
a slight, slight disadvantage in this age, it is true, but
still a disadvantage.

I edited a little paper once for a brief period. I
was owner, editor, and proprietor. This was distinctly
stated at the head of the first column of the
paper. It would have been clear to all, even had I
desired to take shelter under the editorial “we,”
that its use was a naked and notorious falsehood. I
was young then. I knew nothing of civilization.
My education had been greatly neglected, and I
could not lie. I stood up the great big pronoun on
the paper as thick as pickets around a garden fence.
The publication died soon after, it is true, but this
proves nothing against the use of the great and
popular pronoun.

Winter was now approaching; and while I should
have been welcome with the Indians to the end,
I preferred to consider my stay with them in the
light of a visit, and decided to go on to Yreka (a
mining camp then grown to the dignity of a city), and
try my fortune in the mines.

It was unsafe to venture out alone, if not impossible
to find the way; but the two young men who had
assisted as vaqueros in the valley set out with me
and led the way till we touched the trail leading from
Red Bluffs to Yreka on the eastern spurs of Mount
Shasta. Here they took a tender farewell, turned
back, and I never saw them again. They were
murdered before I returned to their village.

The facts of the cruel assassinations are briefly
these. The following summer the young men went
down into Pit River Valley, then filling up rapidly
with white settlers, and there took to themselves
wives from the Pit River tribe, with whom the
Shastas were on the best of terms.

These young fellows had a fondness for the whites,
and were very frequently about the settlements.
They finally made a camp near some men who were
making hay, and put in their time and supported
themselves by hunting and fishing, at the same time
keeping up friendly relations with the whites by
liberal donations of game.

One day one of these Indians, with his young

wife, went out among the hay makers, and while he
was standing there, watching the men at work, two
men came up from a neighbouring part of the prairie
and shot him down in cold blood, saying only that
they knew him and that he was “a damned bad
Injun.”

This is, or was at that time, considered quite sufficient
excuse for taking an Indian's life on the Pacific.
They hid the body under a haycock, and carried his
young and terrified wife to their camp.

That evening the other Indian, returning from the
hills, came to look after his companion. The two men
told him they would show him where he was; and
the young man, still unsuspicious, walked out with
them; but when near the hayfield one of the two,
who had fallen behind, shot him in the back.

The Indian was good mettle, however, and for the
first time discerning the treachery, sprang forward
upon the other now a little in advance and brought
him to the ground. But the poor boy had been
mortally shot, and died almost instantly after.

The plain cold truth of the matter is these men
had seen the two young Indian women, wanted them,
and got them after this manner, as did others in
similar ways, and no one said nay.

This account I had from the lips of one of the very
two men alluded to. His name is Fowler. He told it
by way of a boast, repeatedly, and to numbers of

men, while we were engaged in the Pit river
war. This Fowler is now married to a white woman,
and lives in Shasta county, California.

Of such deeds grew the Pit river valley massacre
hereinafter narrated.

I rode down and around the northern end of the
deep wood, and down into Shasta valley.

If I was unfit to take my part in the battle of life
when I left home, I was now certainly less so. My
wandering had only made me the more a dreamer.
My stay with the Indians had only intensified my
dislike for shopkeepers, and the commercial world in
general, and I was as helpless as an Indian.

I was so shy, that I only spoke to men when compelled
to, and then with the greatest difficulty and
embarrassment. I remember, lonely as I was in my
ride to Yreka, that I always took some by-trail, if
possible, if about to meet people, in order to avoid
them, and at night would camp alone by the wayside,
and sleep in my blanket on the ground, rather
than call at an inn, and come face to face with
strangers.

I left the Indians without any intention of returning,
whatever. I had determined to enter the gold
mines, dig gold for myself, make a fortune, and
return to civilization, or to such civilization as I had
known.

Stronger men than I have had that same plan.
Perhaps one out of twenty has succeeded.

I must here make a long digression from the Indian
trail. In spite of my resolution to boldly enter the
camp or city and bear my part there, as I neared the
town my heart failed me, and I made on to Cottonwood,
a mining camp twenty miles distant, on the
Klamat, and a much smaller town.

After two or three days of unsuccessful attempts
to find some opening, I determined to again marshal
courage and move upon Yreka. I accordingly, on a
clear frosty morning, mounted my pony, and set out
alone for that place.

I rode down to the banks of the beautiful, arrowy
Klamat — misspelled Klamath — with a thousand
peaceful Indians in sight.

A deep, swift stream it was then, beautiful and
blue as the skies; but not so now. The miners
have filled its bed with tailings from the sluice and
tom; they have dumped, and dyked, and mined in
this beautiful river-bed till it flows sullen and turbid
enough. Its Indian name signifies the “giver” or
“generous,” from the wealth of salmon it gave the
red men till the white man came to its banks.

The salmon will not ascend the muddy water
from the sea. They come no more, and the red men
are gone.

As I rode down to the narrow river, I saw a tall,
strong, and elegant-looking gentleman in top boots
and red sash, standing on the banks calling to the
ferryman on the opposite side.

Up to this moment, it seemed to me I had never
yet seen a perfect man. This one now before me
seemed to leave nothing to be desired in all that
goes to make the comely and complete gentleman.
Young—I should say he was hardly twenty-five—
and yet thoroughly thoughtful and in earnest. There
was command in his quiet face and a dignity in his
presence, yet a gentleness, too, that won me there,
and made it seem possible to approach as near his
heart as it is well for one man to approach that of
another.

This, thought I, as I stood waiting for the boat, is
no common person. He is surely a prince in disguise;
may be he is the son of a president or a
banker, wild and free, up here in the mountains for
pleasure. Then I thought from the dark and classic
face that he was neither an American, German, nor
Irishman, and vaguely I associated him with Italian
princes dethroned, or even a king of France in
exile. He was surely splendid, superb, standing there
in the morning sun, in his gay attire, by the swift and
shining river, smiling, tapping the sand in an absentminded
sort of way with his boot. A prince! truly
nothing less than a prince! The man turned and
smiled good-naturedly, as I dismounted, tapped the
sand with his top-boot, gently whistled the old air of
“'49,” but did not speak.

This man was attired something after the Mexican

style of dress, with a wealth of black hair on his
shoulders, a cloak on his arm, and a pistol in his
belt.

The boatman came and took us in his narrow
little flat, and set his oars for the other side. A
sort of Yankee sailor was this boatman, of a very low
sort too; blown up from the sea as sea-gulls are
sometimes found blown out even in the heart of the
plains: a suspicious-looking, sallow, solemn-faced,
bald-headed man in gum-boots, duck-breeches, blue
shirt with the front all open, showing his hairy bosom,
and with a lariat tied about his waist in the form of
a sash.

The tall, fine-looking man stepped ashore with a
quiet laugh as the boat touched the sand, and said,
“Chalk that.” These were the first words I had ever
heard him utter.

The solemn faced ferryman tied his boat in a second,
and, stepping boldly up under the nose of the tall
man, said fiercely:—

“Look here, what do you play me for? Do you
think I'm a Chinaman? You high toned, fine-haired
gamblers don't play me—not much, you don't!”

“Don't want to play you, my friend.”

“Then pay me. Why don't you pay me, and be
off?”

“Haven't got the tin. Can't come to the centre!
Haven't got the dust. Can't liquidate. That's the
reason why.”

And here the good-natured tall gentleman again
tapped the sand with his boot, and looked down at
the river and at the bullying ferryman under his
nose.

“Then leave your coat; leave your—your pistol,
till you come again.”

The tall man shifted his cloak from his right arm
to his left. The ferryman fell back toward his boat.
Sailors know the signs of a storm.

“Look here,” began the tall man, mildly, “I
crossed here yesterday, did I not? I gave you a
whole cart-wheel, did I not? a clean twenty dollar,
and told you to keep the change and use it in crossing
poor devils that were out of tin. You don't
know me now with no mule and no catenas filled
with tin. Forgot what I told you, I should think.
Now, you count out my change, or by the holy
spoons, I'll pitch you in there, neck and crop, among
the salmon.”

And here the tall man reached for the man in blue
who in turn turned red and white and black, and
when he had retreated to the water's edge and saw
the tall man still advancing and reaching for him,
thrust his hand into his capacious pocket and counted
down the coin in a very methodical and business-like
way, into the hand of the other.

Then the tall man laughed good-naturedly, bade
the boatman good-bye, came up and coolly tied his

coat on behind my saddle, and we set forward up the
trail.

The tall man hummed an air as he followed in the
trail behind my pony, the boatman swore a little
as he untied his boat, and the arrowy, silver river
shot away towards the sea between its rocky walls,
with its thousands of listless, dreamy Indians on its
banks.

I take it to be a good sign if a strong, good-natured
man who has a fair opportunity, does not
talk to you much, at first. In fact, as a rule, you
should be cautious of over-talkative strangers. Such
persons have either not sense enough to keep quiet;
not brains enough to ballast their tongues, as it were,
or are low and vicious people who feel their littleness
and feel that they must talk themselves into some
consequence.

After we had gone on in silence for some time,
on turning a point in the trail we saw a man approaching
from the other direction. A strong, fine-looking
man was this also, mounted on a sleek, well-fed mule
with his long ears set sharply forward; a sure sign
that he was on good terms with his rider. The mule
brayed lustily, and then pointed his two ears sharply
at us as if they were opera-glasses, and we a sort of
travelling theatre.

The man was richly dressed, for the mountains;
sported a moustache, top-boots, fur vest, cloth coat,

a broad palm hat, and had diamonds in the bosom of
his shirt. A costly cloak on his shoulders, yellow
buckskin gauntlets, a rich, red sash around his waist,
where swung a pair of Colt's new patent, and a great
gold chain made up by linking specimens of native
gold together, made up this man's attire. His great
hat sheltered him like a palm.