Orphan Hero

by John Babb

  Per the observation of one of his friends, Eb Benson, “Yukon—you done swole up like a dog tick in less’n a month. It’s harder to git you off the bench in this here café than it is to get a hot mule out of a cool barn!”

  He also seemed to have a hard time staying away from the barbershop, particularly when it was obvious that a funny story was being told. Many times, Yukon simply left a customer standing at the counter at his end of the store so he could get close enough to hear the reason behind the laughter in the barbershop. For B. F.’s part, he learned enough in a month about gold mining, miner frustrations, and what really went on at the Pot o’ Gold that he could have filled a good storybook.

  He was also learning some very colorful phrases of expression. At least once a day, Mary stuck her head in the barbershop doorway to shake her finger at some miner that had gone too far with his language. B. F. got the idea that most of them were in love with her in some abstract way that he couldn’t explain. It was almost like she was one of the few representations of something decent in that place, and they all seemed to realize it.

  But you didn’t have to travel very far, or wait very long, for something bad to happen in Hangtown. For the most part, the miners worked hard, struggled in terrible conditions, didn’t eat regularly, stood in mud or icy water for hours at a time, slept in the clothes they worked in, drank whisky to excess, gambled away a week’s work in fifteen minutes, and mostly lived for that perfect day when their pan would be filled with nuggets. There were plenty of people preying on the miners—gamblers, thieves, prostitutes, and so-called business men who charged outlandish prices for necessary goods.

  The actual gold rush had been going on for well over a year by the time B. F. arrived in Hangtown. The initial discovery had occurred in January of 1848, but no easy way existed to get this information back to the eastern United States. In fact, there was no real validation of the gold strike until President Polk’s State of the Union Address in December.

  However, the ability to transport information on the Pacific coast was not nearly so restrictive. Vessels spread the word much more quickly to willing ears in China, the Philippines, Hawaii, Mexico, Australia, and the west coast of South America. Even though it would always be referred to in American eyes as the Gold Rush of 1849, there were many thousands of people already there by the time the first wagon trains of 1849 arrived. B. F. was continually amazed at the wide assortment of nationalities, languages, and cultures to which he was exposed almost every single day in California.

  Even so, the almost universal miner’s greeting was, “How was yer pan today?” Everybody was focused on the gold. Once in a while, a story would circulate that got everybody in a big way, and it usually found a ready audience in the barbershop.

  The gambler, Irish Dick, told a story that got everybody’s hopes up. “There was a young fellow who came in the El Dorado this morning. He swore he saw a champagne bottle full of half inch nuggets that came from three shovelfuls of dirt along Cedar Ravine.”

  “Who was he, Irish?”

  “Said he was from Illinois. He was red-headed—but he appeared to be reliable.”

  “I hear Hangtown Creek is still full of good dust. They’s some of them Celestials brings in three or four pounds every week.”

  “Somebody’ll be takin’ that claim away from them noodle-eaters.”

  “If they do, they best be cocked and loaded. There’s six of them Chinymen on that claim, and they’re all packin’ a gat.”

  As B. F. remembered later, he was half through with cutting Irish Dick’s hair, when two gunshots sounded that seemed to come from right outside the store. Every customer ran out in the street, including the half-barbered Irish Dick. With no more business, B. F. and Yukon went out after them just in time to see a crowd of at least a hundred miners coming down the street toward the hanging tree. They were dragging three men, two of whom appeared to be Mexicans.

  The three had allegedly robbed a man in his mine shaft down on Log Cabin Ravine but had failed to kill him outright, even though they stabbed him in the back. The victim had been able to pull himself up to ground level and quickly raised the alarm. His attackers were still in the neighborhood, thinking they had plenty of time to get away.

  They didn’t. The general agreement of the crowd was that, since they hadn’t actually killed the miner, each man would receive forty lashes with a bullwhip and then take a ride out of town on a rail.

  One by one, the thieves were tied to the trunk of the hanging tree and whipped. At the end of it, only one—the American—was still able to stand. As it turned out, he would have done well to have collapsed with his mouth shut, along with his pals. Instead, he raised himself up and hollered out to the crowd, “You poxed bastards! May yous roast in hell for dis.”

  At that point, a man standing toward the front says to his partner beside him, “I bet those are the boys who murdered that miner over on the Stanislaus River two weeks ago. They stabbed him with a knife too.” He said this, not particularly in a loud manner, but in one of those voices that can always be heard in a noisy place.

  The comment was quickly repeated in all parts of the crowd. “Them’s the murderers from over on the Stanislaus.” From there it was only a short step to, “Let’s string ’em up.” Three ropes were brought forward and thrown over the great oak’s dominant limb.

  The men were in such terrible shape from the beatings that they were too weak to defend themselves, or even protest what was happening. Confusion and terror were reflected in the Mexicans’ eyes. They kept looking at their companion to explain what was happening. B. F. saw the answering hard glare of the American, and realized it was unlikely the Mexicans even understood what was being said about them. For days afterward, B. F. asked himself—had this really been justice?

  The crowd, which had grown to over three hundred by this time, wasted little time in delivering their version of due process—decision by popular vote. The men were in such a state that they had to be dragged to their feet so the ropes could be tied around their necks. Unlike the usual fashion of putting them on horseback and then forcing the horse to run out from under them, thus instantly snapping their necks, no horses were used. After their hands were tied behind their backs, two strong men simply hoisted each of them up in the air and others tied off the ropes. The three men dangled there, side by side, choking and kicking for several minutes until, one by one, they gradually stopped all movement excepting the final emptying of their bladders. The second Mexican twitched for almost fifteen minutes before he too no longer moved.

  B. F. and Yukon walked back in the store, but for a time, B. F. continued to look out the store window at the three lifeless bodies hanging from the tree. He was startled when Yukon put a hand on his shoulder. “Son, you got to realize them boys ain’t hangin’ there just because they sang too loud in church. They’s a good reason behind it.” It was over. Hangtown justice had been delivered.

  My story. On April 7 year of 1850

  Mary has been telling everybody that the name of Hangtown is not good for business. She’s had a little company from the three women who started the Temperance Union, and just yesterday they hung a new sign up. We now live in the town of Placerville. I’m not sure, but I doubt putting up a new sign is going to change the way they hand out justice for a long time to come.

  Every day new miners arrive from San Francisco. Lots of them are here just long enough to find out that mining is really hard work, and they end up leaving just as broke as they were when they got here. The doc says he figures that at least one in twelve men die before they’re able to leave. He says most of them get sick because of the cold and dampness underground in their mines. But it looks to me like plenty of them don’t get enough to eat. It’s pretty common to see a man come in here and spend everything they dug up that day on a good meal. I guess they think tomorrow is going to be their day.

  I’ve seen Mary stick a potato or a biscuit in many a miner’s coat before they leave here because
she knows they won’t have anything to eat except corn mush until they find more gold. It’s no wonder so many of them think she is some kind of angel of mercy.

  We have been here 8 months now and I have seen no sign of my pa. When I talk to men from other mining camps I always ask after my pa, but nobody has seen him. He has had plenty of time to get here. I am starting to think he was truly on the steamboat that wrecked on the Missouri River. I do not want to give up hope, but it just does not make sense. I surely miss my pa. But without him, I can never go back to Indiana.

  Twenty-Three

  One Helluva Way To Go

  Placerville, California 1850

  Gold was getting harder to find. It had become a rare occurrence that gold nuggets appeared in stream beds. Now the miners almost exclusively had to dig—and some of their mines were quite extensive. Also, it was much more common for several miners to join forces as they used more sophisticated techniques than simple panning and sluicing. It seemed to make more sense to band together and take advantage of the additive effects of many hands and picks and shovels. Mining as a group also made it easier to defend your holdings against claim jumpers.

  There was no land office or office of records. Miners simply found a place that was unoccupied, staked the place as their “claim,” and began to look for gold. However, if it was generally perceived that you were no longer actively mining a spot, then your claim could be taken over, or “jumped” by someone else. If you were mining by yourself, particularly if others knew you were finding gold, it was not unheard of for your claim to be jumped if you simply went into town for the night. When you arrived back at your claim the next morning, and several men were there working it and telling you it was now theirs, you had few options.

  These fragile understandings were not enforced by any lawman—for there were none. Only the miners themselves enforced the rules. As often as not, these problems quickly escalated into a fight. However, it had also become fairly common for a group of miners to arbitrate a disagreement between two opposing viewpoints, and their decision was generally observed. It was also not unheard of for a similar group of miners to act almost as vigilantes to correct perceived injustices and punish obvious criminals and trouble makers.

  Seldom did vigilantes stay on the right side of the law for very long. As gold became harder to find, groups of miners decided to drive away the “foreigners”—particularly the ones who seemed to possess the best claims. The attacks were the most brutal against the Chinese, the Mexicans, and the Indians. Some said that around ninety thousand people had come to California in 1849, but only around two-thirds of them were Americans. So there were plenty of targets around for jealous miners and vigilante “justice.”

  It was during 1850 that the new state of California passed a Foreign Miners’ Tax. This required all non-Americans to pay a tax of twenty dollars per month for the privilege of mining for gold in the state. This effectively caused “furriners” who were not working a productive mine to leave the gold fields, or seek other employment.

  It was said that the docks of San Francisco were filled with abandoned ships. As soon as they made port, crews jumped ship and made for the gold fields along with the passengers they had transported. Some people in San Francisco had started taking over the empty ships and turning them into businesses at dockside. Other ships were dismantled in order to quickly provide the milled lumber needed to build shops and hotels in the rapidly growing city. Before gold was discovered in early 1848, there were no more than a thousand people in Yerba Buena, but in 1850 there were more than twenty-five thousand residents in what had become San Francisco.

  The city served not only as an arrival point for all miners traveling by sea, but it was a depot for supplies, equipment, furnishings, and food for at least thirty mining camps that had sprung up within forty miles of Placerville. The miners in the area were often moving from one creek to another as rumors popped up about the latest find. And sometimes those rumors were strategically spread in order to jump decent claims when miners decided the grass had to be greener up at Portuguese Flat or Weaverville or Mormon Springs than it was in their gradually ebbing but still-producing mine outside Placerville.

  One afternoon, B. F. was cutting the hair of a miner by the name of Wilbur Wilcox. According to Mr. Wilcox, he had come into town to “spend some of my money. Me and Hoolihan struck a good vein, and while one of us is diggin’, the other got to be spendin’, otherwise we’ll have too gol’durn much gold. So I volunteered to come spend some.”

  There were three other men sitting there, listening but envious of Wilbur’s good fortune, and asking themselves that ageless question, “Why is it always the other fellow who has all the luck?”

  B. F. noticed another man standing at the doorway. He was short but appeared to be powerfully built in the shoulders. He was very dark complexioned, but what was so striking about him was that his eyes seemed to be on fire with anger. “Hey, you Wilcox. You jump my claim!”

  “Now, Sanchez, you left your claim and took off somewheres else.”

  “I walk up to Dutch Flat to see what going on, then come right back. I only gone a day.”

  “You picked up all your gear and left the area. Far as I’m concerned, you abandoned your diggings, and your claim was there for the taking.”

  “You send that Hoolihan around to tell about new strike at Dutch Flat. Try to make miners leave good claims.”

  “I don’t have no control over the rumors around here.”

  Sanchez reached behind his back and pulled a knife out of his waistband that had a long, narrow blade. At this, Wilbur started grasping for his pistol, but the barber cloth was interfering with his draw. Sanchez realized that he was going for a pistol, and rushed at him. B. F. tried to jump back out of the way, but inadvertently nudged Wilbur’s shoulder as the pistol went off. The room instantly filled with a cloud of acrid smoke from the cap and ball pistol.

  Realizing his hat had been blown off his head, Sanchez hesitated briefly, reasonably assuming he had been killed at a distance of six feet. But as he quickly came to the conclusion that he had survived, he jumped on Wilbur and knocked him backward onto the floor. Wilbur’s arm movement was still restricted and he could not fend off the knife. With an overhead stabbing movement, Sanchez sank the knife at least three inches deep into the top of Wilcox’s head, just about an inch above his hair line, and straight above his right eye.

  The shock of this sudden assault had frozen the shop patrons in their seats, until they realized they had to act. The three of them finally sprang into action, pulling Sanchez off of Wilcox. The victim was left in a seated position on the floor with a ridiculous look on his face. The left side of his mouth seemed to have gone slack, and his left eyelid was hanging down as though he was in the middle of an overstated wink. On top of his head, about half the knife blade and the handle of the knife stuck straight up.

  Yukon burst in the barbershop doorway at about the same time as Mary and Jane. Truth be told, Yukon was far more upset about missing the action than about the man who’d been stabbed in the head in his store. Jane cried out, “B. F., are you alright?”

  A tentative hand rose from behind Wilcox. The man had fallen backward onto B. F. as he tried to get out of the way.

  Yukon looked at Wilcox. “That’s one helluva way to go right there.”

  With some help from Yukon, B. F. slowly pulled himself out from under the victim, and repositioned himself to kneel behind Wilcox. “I don’t think he’s gone anywhere yet—at least not so far. He’s still squeezing my arm with his right hand.”

  “Jesus, Mary, an’ Joseph!” Yukon looked sheepishly at Mary. “Sorry ma’am. I believe my tongue got in front of my eye teeth, and I couldn’t see what I was sayin’.” He turned to one of the men in the barbershop. “Go get Doc McDaniel. Unless he’s already been at it, tell him to take a stiff drink before he comes. He’s gonna need it today.”

  By the time the doc arrived, Wilcox was sitting in the barber chair a
s though he was ready to have his haircut completed. Mary was trying to give him a drink of water, but the liquid was only running down the left side of his chin. Although he had opened his mouth several times as though to speak, it appeared that the knife had struck him dumb, for no sound would come from him other than an indecipherable, piercing squeak.

  Doc McDaniel had seen several traumatic injuries from knife encounters, but certainly nothing like this that had not resulted in immediate death. Although not having the benefit of university training, he had heard about injuries in usually fatal locations with arrows and swords. Perhaps it was in Wilcox’s favor that the Doc was at that rare point during the day wherein he had imbibed enough to stop the trembles but not so much to exhibit poor judgment. “I heard some scientific discussion about people who had these kinds of injuries, where the weapon is still sticking out of them. My doctorial opinion is that we leave the knife right where it is. If we pull it out, chances are he’ll meet his maker real quick. I’d say Wilcox needs to see one of those doctors that specialize in this kind of thing in San Francisco when he’s able to travel.”

  As to the fate of Sanchez, although a small number of miners were sympathetic to his plea of self defense, the majority held that Wilcox only had a single shot pistol, and he had missed, so there was no longer any immediate threat to Sanchez when he stabbed him. They didn’t bother with the small detail that Sanchez had no idea whether Wilox had a single shot or one of those new, six-shot revolvers underneath his barber cloth, and thus would have been in plenty of immediate danger after the first shot was fired. As Yukon Jack reported later, after they hung Sanchez in front of the store, “A couple of fellers is still arguing about the verdict. I don’t know what the big deal is. After all, he was just a Mexican.”