University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.
AFTER A DOZEN YEARS.

MORE than a dozen years had passed away.
And what years! I had gone through almost
every stage and experience of human life. I
had gone far out and away from my life in the mountains
among the Indians. I had come to look upon
it as upon the life of another. It seemed to be no
longer a part of my nature or myself, much as I loved
it and fondly as I cherished the memory of the dead
days and their dead.

Irresistibly I was drawn to return at the first possible
opportunity, and now in the yellow autumn I
was nearing my old home. The narrow trails were
no longer in use. A broad stage road was hewn
from out the mountain-sides, and we dashed through
the forests as if on the highway of an old civilization.

I was an utter stranger to all. I saw no familiar
faces among the few worthless Indians about the
stations, and no white man suspected that I had once
held dominion in all that wild and splendid region.

I sat with the driver as the six horses spun us at
a gallop around the spurs of the mountain crags overhanging
the Sacramento River. Our road, cut from
the rocks, had looked like a spider web swinging in
the air when we saw it first from the waters of the
Sacramento, that boiled and foamed in a bed-rock
flume now thousands of feet below us.

The passengers, who had been very loud and
hilarious, were now very quiet, and an old gentleman,
who was engaged in some quartz speculation, and
had been extremely anxious to get ahead, here stuck
his head out of the window as he gasped for breath,
and protested to the driver that he had changed his
mind about reaching camp so soon, that, in fact, he
was in no hurry at all, and that, if he was a mind to,
he might go a little slow.

The driver then gently threaded the ribbons
through his fingers as if to get a firmer hold, threw
his right arm out, and snapped the silk under the
heels of his leaders.

This was the nervous man's only answer.

It was perfectly splendid. We were playing spider
and fly in the heavens. Down at the mountain's base
and pressed to the foamy rim of the river, stood the
madrono and manzanita, light, but trim-limbed, like
sycamore; and up a little way were oak, and ash,
and poplar trees, yellow as the autumn frosts could
paint them; and as the eye ascended the steep and

stupendous mountain that stood over across the
river against us, yet so close at hand, the fir and
tamarack grew dense and dark, with only now and
then a clump of yellow trees, like islands set in a sea
of green.

Here and there a scarlet maple blazed like the
burning bush, and to a mind careless of appropriate
figures, might have suggested Jacob's kine, or the
coat of many colours. How we flew and dashed
around the rocky spurs! Some chipmunks dusted
down the road and across the track, and now and
then perched on a limb in easy pistol-shot; a splendid
grey squirrel looked at us under his bushy tail, and
barked and chattered undisturbed; but we saw no
other game. In a country famous for its bear, we
saw not so much as a track.

Down under us on the river-bank the smoke
of a solitary wigwam curled lazily up through the
trees, and the Indian that stood on the rocks spearing
the autumn run of salmon looked no taller than
a span.

Again we dashed around a rocky point, and the
driver set his leaders back on their haunches with a
jerk that made six full groans issue from inside the
stage, and as many heads hurry through the windows.
The driver pushed back his hat, the hat that stage
drivers persist in wearing down on their noses,
pointed with his whip into the air, and said,

“How's that for high?”

Then again he snapped his silk, settled the
insiders in their seats, and we were dashing on
as before.

Mount Shasta! Shasta the magnificent was
before us, above us! And so sudden! And at
last, and after so many, many years!

As if a great iceberg, a portion of Alaska, had
broken loose, and, seamed and scarred by the sun,
drifted through the air upon us.

The driver felt and silently acknowledged the
power of this majestic presence, for he held the silk
in his hands very quietly, and let the tired horses
have it their own way till he drew the reins and
called out at the end of the next half hour, “Fifteen
minutes for supper!”

Even the foaming horses, weary as they were,
lifted their ears a little and stepped more alert and
lively when the sun flashed back upon us from the
snowy breastplate of kingly Shasta.

Here I determined to cross the Sacramento, climb
the mountains of the other side, pierce the splendid
forests, and reach the valleys of McCloud at the base
of Shasta.

In my mind, the wigwams still sent up their
smoke through the dense firs of the McCloud, and
pretty maidens still bore water on their heads in
willow baskets from the river to the village, I

almost heard the ancient, wrinkled squaws, grinding
acorn bread, and the shouts of the naked children at
their sports.

I could get no ponies, and so had to take little lean
Mexican mules, old and lazy as possible, the remnant
of some of the great pack trains that strung across
these mountains in the days when they were only
marked by narrow trails, and everything was transported
on the backs of these patient little animals.

My guide, sent along by the ranchero to take care
of the mules and return them, was a singular Indian.
His name was “Limber Jim.” I should have known
his name was Limber Jim before I heard it. Out
here things take their names just as they impress
you. Once a six-foot desperado said to a man with
a freckled face, who had wedged himself into a party
as they were lifting glasses, “What is your name?”

“P. Archibald Brown.”

“P. Archibald Hell!—your name is Ginger.”

A Californian desperado is not a fool; he is oftener
a genius. “P. Archibald Brown” was never heard
of after that. Down in Arizona is now a board at the
head of a little sandy hillock marked “Ginger.”

When Limber Jim moved, every limb and muscle
was in motion. When he opened his mouth he also
opened his hands, and when he opened his hands he
would helplessly open his mouth.

After we had forded the Sacramento and climbed

the long and rugged trail on the other side, we rested
in the shade and I asked the creature his history.
His short and simple annals were to the effect that
he was an Indian lad in good standing with the
whites while they were at war with his fathers, and
was a great pet among them.

But one morning after a pack train had disappeared
a rancheria was surrounded and all the men and
boys taken to the camp for execution, in case the
mules were not returned in a given time.

The animals, of course, did not come back, and
the Indians, a dozen or more, were punctually suspended
to the nearest tree, and Jim was hung among
the rest. He said he was hung by mistake; and
was very confident there was no intention of hanging
him, but that he got mixed up with the rest, and
that men who did not know his face suspended him,
where he hung all day by the neck till it got very
dark, when they took him down and told him they
were very sorry. He added mournfully, that his
nerves had never been reliable since.

We pushed our little Spanish mules along the worn
trail that stretched across the mountain. At noon
we came down to the McCloud, which we found too
deep to ford, and therefore bore up the stream a little
way till we could find a lodge and log canoe. It
looked so very lonely. Here stood lodges, but they
were empty. There, on a point where I had left a

thriving, prosperous village, the rye grass grew rank
and tall as our shoulders as we rode along.

The lodges stood still as of old. An Indian never
tears down his house. It will serve to shelter some
one who is lost or homeless; besides, there is a superstition
which forbids it. From one of these lodges a
small black wolf started out and stole swiftly across
the hill. When a white man leaves a habitation he
changes the face of things; an Indian leaves them
unimpaired. His deserted house is the perfect body
with only the soul withdrawn. An empty Indian
village is the gloomiest place in the world.

We crossed the McCloud, and our course lay
through a saddle in the mountains to Pit River; so
called from the blind pits dug out like a jug by the
Indians in places where their enemies or game are
likely to pass. These pits are dangerous traps; they
are ten or fifteen feet deep, small at the mouth, but
made to diverge in descent, so that it is impossible
for anything to escape that once falls into their
capacious maws. To add to their horror, at the
bottom, elk and deer antlers that have been ground
sharp at the points are set up so as to pierce any
unfortunate man or beast they may chance to
swallow up.

They are dug by the squaws, and the earth taken
from them is carried in baskets and thrown into the
river. They are covered in the most cunning manner;

even footprints in an old beaten trail are made above
the treacherous pits, and no depression, no broken
earth, nothing at all indicats their presence except
the talismanic stones or the broken twigs and other
signs of a sort of rude freemasonry which only the
members of a tribe can understand.

Here we passed groves of most magnificent oak.
Their trunks are five and six feet in diameter, and
the boughs were then covered with acorns and fairly
matted with the mistletoe.

Coming down on to the banks of Pit River, we
heard the songs and shouts of Indian girls gathering
acorns. They were up in the oaks, and half covered
in the mistletoe. They would beat off the acorns
with sticks, or cut off the little branches with tomahawks,
and the older squaws gathered them from
the ground, and threw them over their shoulders in
baskets borne by a strap around the forehead. I
must here expose a popular delusion.

I have heard parents insist that their girls should
wear shoes, and tight ones at that, in childhood, so
that their feet should be small and neat when
grown. Now, I am bound to say that these Indian
women, who never wear anything closer than a
moccasin or Mexican sandal, and not half of the
time either of the two, have the smallest and
prettiest feet, and hands also, I have ever seen.

These few Indian girls were pretty. Some of them

were painted red; and their splendid flow of intense
black hair showed well in the yellow leaves and the
rich green mistletoe. Some warriors watched a little
way off on a hill, lest some savage border ruffians,
under a modern Romulus, should swoop down upon
them and carry them off.

We rode under the oaks and they laughed playfully
and crept closer into the leaves. One little
sun-browned savage pelted Limber Jim with acorns.
Then he opened his mouth and laughed, and opened
his hands and let go his reins, and rolled and shook
in his saddle as if possessed by an earthquake.

Toward evening, in the bend of Pit River, we
came upon an old Indian herding ponies, and it
occurred to us to leave our mules to rest and get
fresh horses. Accordingly, we approached the old
fellow, sunning himself on the sand before his lodge,
and said, in the old words by which a favour was
asked when first I knew this people, and had for the
asking,

“Brother, the sun goes on. Your brothers are
weary and have far to go. Bring us better horses.”

The old tender of herds turned his head half way,
and informed me in broken English and butchered
Mexican, badly put together, that he had some
horses to sell, but none to give away. Consternation!
These Indians are getting civilized, I said to
myself. Here has been a missionary in my absence;
and we rode on.

Every foot of ground here, even up to the rugged
base of Shasta, was familiar to me. Sometimes, to
the terror of Limber Jim, I took the lead in the trail.
I knew as well as he the stones or the broken twigs
that pointed out the pit. All the afternoon we rode
along the rim of the bright blue river, except when
forced to climb a spur of mountain that ran its nose
fairly into the water and cut us off.

All along the shores stood deserted lodges, and
the grass grew rank and tall around them. They
had been depopulated for years. I had not as yet
met a single old acquaintance.

It was fairly dark before we dismounted at an
empty lodge and pitched camp for the night.

Early we set out next morning on our solitary
ride for the camp, where the little remnant of the
Shastas were said to be gathered high up on the
mountain. More empty lodges, right and left only
solitude and desertion.

We left the river and turned up a gorge. Sometimes,
in the great canon running to the sun, the air was
warm and fresh of falling leaves; and then again as we
turned a point it came pitching down upon us, keen
and sharp from the snows of Shasta. But few birds
sing here. There are some robins and larks, and
also some turtle-doves, which the Indians will not
harm. Partridges in splendid crests ran in hundreds
across the trails, and these whistle all the year;

but there was an unaccountable scarcity of birds for
a country so densely timbered.

At last, when the shadows were very long, we
climbed a rugged, rocky hill, nearly impassable for
man or mule, and saw on a point in a clump of pines,
that could only be reached by crossing an open space
of rocks and lava, the camp we sought.

Indians have no terms of salutation. If the dogs
do not celebrate your arrival, all things go on the
same as if you had never been. You dismount, unsaddle
your mule, turn it to grass, take a drink of
water, and then light your pipe, when the men will
gather about you by degrees and the women
bring refreshments. But our arrival here was an
uncommon occasion. No white man had as yet set
foot on this rocky ridge and natural fortress; and
then when it was known that one had returned to
their mountains whom they had known of old, and
whose exploits and manners they have magnified by
repeated narration, no Indian stolidity could keep up
their traditional dignity. Children peeped from the
lodges, and squaws came out from among the trees,
with babies in willow baskets. There was a little
consultation, and we were taken to a lodge of great
dimensions, made of cedar bark fastened by withes
and weights to a framework of fir and cedar poles.
The walls were about eight feet high; the roof sloping
like that of an ordinary cabin, with an opening
in the comb for the smoke.

We had refreshments; meats roasted by the fire,
and manzanita berries ground to powder, and acorn
bread.

Runners were sent to the Modoc camp, a half-day
distant, and the few warriors came. But I
did not know a single face. The old warriors had
all perished. New men had grown in their places.
It seemed as if I had outlived my generation even
in my youth. Then a long smoke in silence, a little
time for thought, and preparations were made for a
great talk.

And what a talk it was! Indians, like white men,
talk best about themselves. They spoke by turns,
each rising in his place, speaking but once, and few
or many minutes, according to his age and inclination.
They gesticulated greatly, and spoke rapidly;
sometimes striking with imaginary knives, twanging
bows, and hurling tomahawks; and all the time boasting
of their own deeds or those of their fathers.
One young man who had not yet been in battle told
of killing a bear; this made another young man
laugh, and then all the Indians frowned terribly. To
think that a young man should so far forget himself
as to laugh in council!

Nearly all the speeches were mournful, sad, and
pathetic, but some very fine things were said. As of
old, all their invectives were hurled at their hereditary
enemy. One old man said, “The whites were as the

ocean, strong and aggressive; while the red men
were as the sand, silent, helpless, tossed about, run
upon, and swallowed up.” He was the only one
that stood up tall and talked like a reasonable man.
He wore a robe of panther skins thrown back from
his shoulders.

I saw that even these few surviving people would
not die in silence. They were as a wounded serpent
that could yet strike if a foot was set in reach.

To me all this was sad beyond recital. What had
these people seen, endured, felt, suffered in all the
years of my absence! And the end was not yet.

The struggles of many years were recounted many
times, by each man telling the part he had borne in
the battles, and from an Indian's standpoint it looked
sad enough. The old savage spoken of had not much
to say of himself, but now and then his long fingers
would point to scars on his naked breast, when
alluding to some battle.

“Once,” said he, in conclusion, “we were so many
we could not all stand upon this hill; now we are all in
one little cawel;” and here he made a solemn sweep
with his arm, which was very grand. Then after a
pause he said: “Once I had seven wives, now I have
only two.”

At midnight, with solemn good-nights, the men
arose one by one and retired.

Over all things there hung a gloom. I went out

into the village of a dozen houses that crouched down
under the dense black pines. What a glorious moon!
Only such a moon as California can afford. A long
white cloud of swans stretched overhead, croaking
dolefully enough; the sea of evergreen pines that
rolled about the bluff and belted the base of Shasta
was sable as a pall, but the snowy summit in the
splendours of the moon, flashed like a pyramid of
silver! All these mountains, all these mighty forests,
were to me a schoolboy's play-ground, the playmates
gone, the master dead.