University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
IN A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP.

I THINK I was ill. I remember some things
but vaguely which took place this night, and
the day and night that followed.

I am certain that something was wrong all this
time; for, as a rule, when we first land from a voyage,
or reach a journey's end, the mind is fresh and strong
—a blank ready to receive impressions and to retain
them.

If you will observe or recall the fact, you will find
that the first city you visited in China, or the first
sea-port you touched at in Europe, is fixed in your
mind more perfectly than any other. But my recollection
of this time, usually clear and faultless, is
shadowy and indistinct. I was surely ill.

This black man to me was a nightmare. I stood
before him like a convict before his keeper. I felt
that he was my master. Had he told me to do this
or that I would have gone and done it, glad to get

from under his one and dreadful eye, that seemed to
be burning a hole in my head.

The one-eyed black villain knew very well he was
torturing me. He took a delight in it. Understand
he had not said a word. I had not lifted my eyes.

At last he hoisted his black fat hand to his black
thick head and turned away. I walked with an effort
out into the street. This man had taken my strength;
he had absorbed me into his strong animal body.

Here is a subject that I do not understand at all.
I will only state a fact. There are men that exhaust
me. There are men that if they come into a room
and talk to me, or even approach closely, take my
strength from me more speedily, and as certainly, as
if I spent my force climbing a hill. There are men
that I cannot endure; their presence is to me an
actual physical pain. I have tried to overcome this
—in vain. I have found myself dodging men in the
street, hiding around the corner, or flying like a pickpocket
into a crowd to escape them. Good honest
men are they—some of them, no doubt, yet they use
me up; they absorb, exhaust me; they would kill me
dead in less than a week.

I stole away from the stable and reached the main
street. A tide of people poured up and down, and
across from other streets, as strong as if in New York.
The white people on the side walks, the Chinese and
mules in the main street. Not a woman in sight, not

a child, not a boy. People turned to look at me as
at something new and out of place.

I was very hungry, faint, miserable. The wind
pitched down from the white-covered mountains,
cold and keen, and whistled above the crowds along
the streets. I got a biscuit for my half-dollar,
walked on, ate it unobserved, and was stronger.

Brick houses on either hand, two and three stories
high. A city of altogether, perhaps, five thousand
souls. I was utterly overcome by the magnitude of
the place and the multitude of people. There being
but one main street, I kept along this till the further
end was reached, then turned back, and thus was
not lost or bewildered. I returned to the stable,
stronger now, yet almost trembling with fear of
meeting the black man with one eye.

As a rule, beware of one-eyed people, who have
not a strong moral anchor; also beware of cripples,
unless they too have a good and patient nature. Fate
has put them at a disadvantage with the world, and
they can only battle and keep pace with their
fellows by cunning. Nine times out of ten they
instinctively take to treachery and tricks to overcome
this disadvantage. That is only natural.

On the same principle, woman, who is not so
strong as man, resorts to strategy to match him.
What she lacks in strength, she makes up in being
more than his equal in craftiness. The strong

grizzly goes boldly upon his prey, crushing through
the chapparal like the march of an army; the panther
lies on a limb, waiting to take it at a disadvantage.
A deaf and dumb person is usually a lovable character;
so is one who is totally blind, for these live somewhat
more within themselves and do not go out to
battle with the world, or at least, do not attempt to
match it in the daily struggle; but you put a one-eyed
man or a cripple in the fight, and unless he is very
good, he is very bad indeed.

I went up to my pony, standing on three legs with
his nose in the hay, put my arms around his neck,
talked baby-talk to him, and felt as with an old
friend. There was a little opening overhead, a place
where they put hay down from the loft. I looked
up. An idea struck me. I looked over my shoulder
for the negro. No one was there. I climbed up like
a cat; found a hump of hay, crept into it, and was
soon fast asleep.

It was not a pleasant bed. The wind whistled
through the loft, and though I crept and cowered
into the very heart of the hay-pile, the frost followed
me up unmercifully. I descended with the dawn,
lest the negro should be there, and was on the street
even before the Chinamen, and long before the sun.
A frost was on the ground, and a taste of winter in
the air and wind.

To the west the pine hills were brown with the

dead grass, then farther up, green with pine and fir,
then white with frost and snow.

I walked up the single long street in that direction,
the hills began to flash back the sun that
glowed from Shasta's helmet, and my heart rose up
with the sun. I said, “The world is before me.
Here is a new world being fashioned under my very
feet. I will take part in the work, and a portion of
it shall be mine.”

All this city had been built, all this country
opened up, in less than two years. Twenty months
before, only the Indian inhabited here; he was lord
absolute of the land. But gold had been found on
this spot by a party of roving mountaineers; the
news had gone abroad, and people poured in and
had taken possession in a day, without question and
without ceremony.

And the Indians? They were pushed aside. At
first they were glad to make the strangers welcome;
but when they saw where it would all lead, they
grew sullen and concerned. Then trouble arose;
they retreated, and Ben Wright took the field and
followed them, as we have seen.

I hurried on a mile or so to the foot-hills, and
stood in the heart of the placer mines. Now the
smoke from the low chimneys of the log cabins
began to rise and curl through the cool, clear air on
every hand, and the miners to come out at the low

doors; great hairy, bearded, six-foot giants, hatless,
and half-dressed.

They stretched themselves in the sweet, frosty
air, shouted to each other in a sort of savage
banter, washed their hands and faces in the gold-pans
that stood by the door, and then entered their
cabins again, to partake of the eternal beans and
bacon and coffee, and coffee and bacon and beans.

The whole face of the earth was perforated with
holes; shafts sunk and being sunk by these men in
search of gold, down to the bed-rock. Windlasses
stretched across these shafts where great buckets
swung, in which men hoisted the earth to the light of
the sun by sheer force of muscle.

The sun came softly down, and shone brightly on
the hillside where I stood. I lifted my hands to
Shasta, above the butte and town, for he looked like
an old acquaintance, and I again was glad.

It is one of the chiefest delights of extreme youth,
and I may add of extreme ignorance, to bridge over
rivers with a rainbow. And one of the chief good
things of youth and verdancy is buoyancy of spirits.
You may be twice vanquished in a day, and if you
are neither old nor wise you may still be twice glad.

A sea of human life began to sound and surge
around me. Strong men shouldered their picks and
shovels, took their gold-pans under their arms, and
went forth to their labour. They sang little snatches

of songs familiar in other lands, and now and then
they shouted back and forth, and their voices arose
like trumpets in the mountain air.

I went down among these men full of hope. I
asked for work. They looked at me and smiled, and
went on with their labour. Sometimes, as I went
from one claim to another, they would ask me what
I could do. One greasy, red-faced old fellow, with
a green patch over his left eye, a check shirt, yellow
with dirt, and one suspender, asked—

“What in hell are you doing here anyhow?”....

My spirit mercury fell to freezing point before
night.

At dusk I again sought the rude half-open stable,
put my arms around my pony's neck, caressed him
and talked to him as to a brother. I wanted, needed
something to love and talk to, and this horse was all
I had.

I trembled lest the negro should be near, and
hastened to climb again into the loft and hide in my
nest of hay.

It was late when I awoke. I had a headache and
hardly knew where I was. When I had collected my
mind and understood the situation, I listened for the
negro's voice. I heard him in the far part of the
stable, and, frightened half to death, hastened to
descend.

When a young bear up a tree hears a human voice

at the root it hastens down, even though it be perfectly
safe where it is, and will reach the ground only to
fall into the very arms of the hunter.

My conduct was something like that of the young
bear. I can account for the one about as clearly as
for the other.

My hat was smashed in many shapes, my clothes
were wrinkled, and there were fragments of hay and
straw in my hair. My heart beat audibly, and my
head ached till I was nearly blinded with pain as I
hastened down.

There was no earthly reason why I should fear
this negro. Reason would have told me it was not
in his power to harm me; but I had not then grown
to use my reason.

There are people who follow instinct and impulse,
much as a horse or dog, all through rather eventful
lives, and, in some things, make fewer mistakes than
men who act only from reason.

A woman follows instinct more than man does, and
hence is keener to detect the good or bad in a face
than man, and makes fewer real mistakes.

When I had descended and turned hastily and
half blinded to the door, there stood the one-eyed
negro, glaring at me with his one eye ferociously.

“What the holy poker have you been a doin' up
there? Stealin' my eggs, eh? Now look here, you
better git. Do you hear?” And he came toward

me, keeping between me and the door as I tried to
pass. “I know you; do you hear? I know'd you
stole dat hoss, I did. Now you git.”

Here he stepped aside, levelled his one eye at me
like a single-barrelled shot-gun as I fled past him,
half expecting he would take me on the wing.

What should I do? What did I do? I ran! A
boy's legs, like a mule's heels, answer many arguments.
They are his last resort, and often his first
Deprive him of everything else, but leave him his
legs, and he will get on.

I was not strong. I was not used to making my
way through a crowd, and got on slowly. I ran
against men coming down the street with picks
and pans, and they swore lustily. I ran against
Chinamen, with great baskets on their bamboo poles,
who took it in good part and said nothing. I expected
every moment this black man would seize me
in his black hands and lug me off to a prison. I was
surely delirious.

At last, when near the hotel, I took time to look
over my shoulder. I could see nothing of him; he
perhaps had not left the stable.

As I passed the hotel the Prince came out. He
had slept and rested the day before, after his night
and day of sport and travel, and looked fresh as the
morning.

“How-dy-do?” said the Prince, in his quiet, good

[ILLUSTRATION]

NOW YOU GIT.

[Description: 645EAF. Illustration page. A Large Black man stands in the open doorway to a barn. A white man cowers outside of the barn. There is a large pole near the door to the barn and there are stack sof hay inside the barn and hay strewn on the ground.]

humoured way. “How-dy-do? Take a drink?”
And he led me into the bar-room. I followed
mechanically.

In most parts of America the morning salutation
is, “How d'ye do? How's the folks?” But on
the Pacific it is, “How-dy-do? Take a drink?”

There was a red sign over the door of the hotel—
a miner with a pick, red shirt, and top boots. I
lifted my face and looked at that sign to hide my expression
of concern from the Prince.

“Hullo, my little chicken, what's up? You look as
pale as a ghost. Come, take a smash! It will strengthen
you up. Been on a bender last night; no?” cried
an old sailor, glass in hand.

There was an enormous box-stove there in the
middle of the room, with a drum like a steam boiler
above, and a great wood fire that cracked and roared
like a furnace.

The walls were low, of painted plank, and were hung
around with cheap prints in gay colours—of racehorses,
prize-fighters, and bull-dogs. One end of the
room was devoted to a local picturing, on a plank
half the size of a barn door, which was called a
Mexican Bull. This name was prudently written at
the bottom, perhaps to prevent mistakes. The great
picture of the place, however, was that of a grizzly
bear and hunter, which hung at the back of the man
who dealt out the tumblers behind the bar. This

picture was done by the hunter himself. He was
represented clasped in the bear's embrace, and
heroically driving an enormous knife to his heart.
The knife was big and broad as a hand-saw, red and
running with blood. The bear's fore legs were enormous,
and nearly twice as long and large as his hind
ones. It may be a good stroke of genius to throw all
the strength and power in the points to which the
attention will most likely be directed. At least that
seemed to be the policy adopted by this artist of the
West.

An Indian scalp or two hung from a corner of this
painting. The long matted hair hung streaming
down over the ears of the bear and his red open
mouth. A few sheaves of arrows in quivers were hung
against the wall, with here and there a tomahawk, a
scalping-knife, boomerang and war-club, at the back
of the “bar-keep.”

Little shelves of bottles, glasses, and other requisites
of a well-regulated bar, sprang up on either side
of the erect grizzly bear; and on the little shelf
where the picture rested lay a brace of pistols,
capped and cocked, within hand's reach of the cinnamon-haired
bar-keeper. This man was short, thickset,
and of enormous strength, strength that had not
remained untrained. He had short red hair, which
stuck straight out from the scalp; one tooth out in
front, and a long white scar across his narrow red

forehead. He wore a red shirt, open at the throat,
with the sleeves rolled up his brawny arms to the
elbows.

All this seems to be before me now. I believe I
could count and tell with a tolerable accuracy the
number of glasses and bottles there were behind the
bar.

Here is something strange. Everything that
passed, everything that touched my mind through
any source whatever, every form that my eyes
rested upon, in those last two or three minutes
before I broke down, remained as fixed and
substantial in the memory, as shafts of stone.

Is it not because they were the last? because the
mind, in the long blank that followed, had nothing
else to do but fix those last things firmly in their
place; something as the last scene on the land or
the last words of friends are remembered when we
go down on a long journey across the sea.

I have a dim and uncertain recollection of trying
hard to hold on to the bar, of looking up to the
Prince for help in a helpless way; the house seemed
to rock and reel, and then one side of the room was
lifted up so high I could not keep my feet—could not see
distinctly, could not hear at all, and then all seemed to
recede; and all the senses refused to struggle longer
against the black and the blank sea that came over
me, and all things around me.

The Prince, I think, put out his strong arms and
took me up, but I do not know. All this is painful to
recall. I never asked anything about it when I got
up again, because I tried to forget it. That is
impossible. I see that bar, bar-keeper, and grizzly-bear
so distinctly this moment, that if I were a
painter I could put every face, every tumbler, everything
there, on canvas as truthfully as they could
be taken by a photograph.

I remember the room they took me to up-stairs.
They spoke kindly, but I do not think I could
answer. Every now and then, through it all and in
all things, I could see the one-eyed negro. I lay
looking at the double-barrelled shot-gun against the
wall by the bed, and the bowie-knife that lay beside
a brace of pistols on the table; some decanters on a
stand, and a long white pole, perhaps a sort of pick-handle,
in the corner, are all that I remember. And
yet all this fixed on the mind in an instant; for
soon my remaining senses went away, and returned
no more for many, many weeks.

There was a little Chinaman, tawny, moon-eyed
and silent, sitting by the bed; but when he saw me
lift my hands and look consciously around, his
homely features beamed with delight. He sprung
up from my side, spun around the room a time or
two in his paper slippers, hitched up his blue, loose
trousers, and seemed as glad as a country child when

[ILLUSTRATION]

AMONG BARBARIANS.

[Description: 645EAF. Illustration page. A Chinese man bends over a bed where a white oman is lying. Another man look in from a doorway. There is a table with flowers and a book near the foot of the bed.]

a parent comes home from town. Then he took up
my hand, moved my head, fixed the pillow, and
again spun around the room, grinning and showing
his white teeth.

This little moon-eyed heathen belonged to that
race we send so many tracts and missionaries to
across the seas; and was one of those little wretches
that the dear children in the cities of the Pacific pelt
and pound on Sabbath days with cobble stones,
rotten apples, hymn-books, bibles, and whatever
comes convenient, as they return home from church
and Sunday school.

At last, this diminutive Chinaman seemed to come
to his senses, and shot out of the door and down the
stairs as if flying for a wager, and I slept then and
dreamed sweet and beautiful dreams.

When I awoke the little heathen had returned.
The Prince, more earnest and thoughtful, it seemed
to me, than before, was at my side, and with him a
sallow, sickly-looking physician in green glasses, and
a ruffled shirt. Miners were coming in and going
out on tip-toe, holding their slouch hats stiffly in
both hands, and making long measured steps as they
moved around the bed.

I looked for the shot-gun on the wall but it was
gone; a fancy-picture too had disappeared, or possibly,
I had only dreamed that such a picture hung on the
wall across by the window. The pistols had been

taken away, too, from the stand, and the bowie-knife
was gone. There was only a book on the
stand—a brown, old, leather-bound book. The
decanters had been taken away, and a short junk-bottle
stood there, doing service for a vase, with a
bunch of wild autumn blossoms, and a green fir-twig
or two to relieve the yellow of the blooms.