Gold

by Stewart Edward White

  CHAPTER XIII

  UP-RIVER

  Two days later Yank, Johnny, and I embarked aboard a small bluff-bowedsailboat, waved our farewells to Talbot standing on the shore, and laidour course to cross the blue bay behind an island called Alcatraz. Ourboatman was a short, swarthy man, with curly hair and gold rings in hisears. He handled his boat well, but spoke not at all. After a dozenattempts to get something more than monosyllables out of him, we gave itup, and settled ourselves to the solid enjoyment of a new adventure.

  The breeze was strong, and drove even our rather clumsy craft atconsiderable speed. The blue waters of the bay flashed in the sun andriffled under the squalls. Spray dashed away from our bows. A chillraced in from the open Pacific, diluting the sunlight.

  We stared ahead of us, all eyes. The bay was a veritable inland sea; andthe shores ahead of us lay flat and wide, with blue hazy hills in thedistance, and a great mountain hovering in midair to our right. Blackcormorants going upwind flapped heavily by us just above the water,their necks stretched out. Gulls wheeled and screamed above us, orfloated high and light like corks over the racing waves. Rafts of duckslay bobbing, their necks furled, their head close to their bodies. Asalt tang stirred our blood; and on the great mountain just north of theharbour entrance the shadows of canons were beginning most beautifullyto define themselves.

  Altogether it was a pleasant sail. We perched to windward, and smokedour pipes, and worked ourselves to a high pitch of enthusiasm over whatwe were going to see and do. The sailor too smoked his pipe, leaningagainst the long, heavy tiller.

  The distant flat shores drew nearer. We turned a corner and could makeout the mouth of a river, and across it a white line that, as we came upon it, proved to be the current breaking against the wind over a verysolid bar. For the first time our sailor gave signs of life. He stood onhis feet, squinted ahead, ordered us amidships, dropped the peak of themainsail, took the sheet in his hand. We flew down against the breakers.In a moment we were in them. Two sickening bumps shook our veryvertebrae. The mast swayed drunkenly from side to side as the boat rolledon her keel, the sail flopped, a following wave slopped heavily over thestern, and the water swashed forward across our feet. Then we recovereda trifle, staggered forward, bumped twice more, and slid into thesmoother deep water. The sailor grunted, and passed us a dipper. Webailed her out while he raised again the peak of his sail.

  Shortly after this experience we glided up the reaches of a widebeautiful river. It had no banks, but was bordered by the tall reedscalled tules. As far as the eye could reach, and that was very far whenwe climbed part way up the mast to look, these tules extended. Leagueafter league they ran away like illimitable plains, green and brown andbeautiful, until somewhere over the curve of the earth straight aheadthey must have met distant blue hills. To the southeast there seemed noend but the sky.

  From the level of the boat, however, we saw only a little way into theouter fringe. The water lay among the stalks, and mud hens with whitebills pushed their way busily into intricate narrow unguessed waterways.Occasionally the hedge of the tules broke to a greater or lesser openinginto a lagoon. These were like shallow lakes, in which sometimes grewclumps of grasses. They were covered with waterfowl. Never have I seenso many ducks and geese of all kinds. They literally covered the surfaceof the water, and fairly seemed to jostle each other as they swam busilyto and fro, intent on some business of their own. Their comfortable, lowconversational clucking and quacking was a pleasure to hear. When, outof curiosity, we fired a revolver shot, they rose in the air with a roarlike that of a great waterfall, and their crossing lines of flight inthe sky was like the multitude of midges in the sun. I remember oneflock of snow-white geese that turned and wheeled, alternately throwingtheir bodies in shadow or in the sunlight, so that they flashedbrilliantly.

  As the sun declined, the wind fell. Fortunately the current in the riverwas hardly perceptible. We slipped along on glassy waters. Thousandsupon thousands of blackbirds dipped across us uttering their calls.Against a saffron sky were long lines of waterfowl, their necksoutstretched. A busy multitudinous noise of marsh birds rose and fellall about us. The sun was a huge red ball touching the distant hills.

  At last the wind failed us entirely, but the sailor got out a pair ofsweeps, and we took turns rowing. Within a half hour we caught thesilhouette of three trees against the sky, and shortly landed on alittle island of solid ground. Here we made camp for the night.

  All next day, and the days after, being luckily favoured by steady fairwinds, we glided up the river. I could not but wonder at the certaintywith which our sailor picked the right passage from the numerous falsechannels that offered themselves. The water was beautifully clear andsweet; quite different from the muddy currents of to-day. Shortly thesolid ground had drawn nearer; so that often we passed long stretches ofearth standing above the tule-grown water. Along these strips grewsycamore and cottonwood trees of great size, and hanging vines of thewild grape. The trees were as yet bare of leaves, but everything elsewas green and beautiful. We could see the tracks of many deer along theflats, but caught no sight of the animals themselves. At one place,however, we did frighten a small band of half a dozen elk. They crashedaway recklessly through the brush, making noise and splashing enough fora hundred. Yank threw one of his little pea bullets after them; andcertainly hit, for we found drops of blood. The sailor shook his headdisparagingly over the size of the rifle balls, to Yank's vast disgust.I never saw him come nearer to losing his temper. As a matter of fact Ithink the sailor's contention had something in it; the long accurateweapon with its tiny missile was probably all right when its user had achance to plant the bullet exactly in a fatal spot, but not for suchquick snap shooting as this. At any rate our visions of cheap fresh meatvanished on the hoof.

  The last day out we came into a wide bottomland country with oaks. Thedistant blue hills had grown, and had become slate-gray. At noon wediscerned ahead of us a low bluff, and a fork in the river; and amongthe oak trees the gleam of tents, and before them a tracery of mastswhere the boats and small ships lay moored to the trees. This was the_embarcadero_ of Sutter's Fort beyond; or the new city ofSacramento, whichever you pleased. Here our boat journey ended.

  We disembarked into a welter of confusion. Dust, men, mules, oxen,bales, boxes, barrels, and more dust. Everything was in the open air.Tents were pitched in the open, under the great oaks, anywhere andeverywhere. Next, the river, and for perhaps a hundred yards from thebanks, the canvas structures were arranged in rows along what wereevidently intended to be streets; but beyond that every one simply"squatted" where he pleased. We tramped about until we found a clearspace, and there dumped down our effects. They were simple enough; andour housekeeping consisted in spreading our blankets and canvas, andunpacking our frying pan and pots. The entire list of our provisionsconsisted of pork, flour, salt, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, and somespirits.

  After supper we went out in a body to see what we could find outconcerning our way to the mines. We did not even possess a definite ideaas to where we wanted to go!

  In this quest we ran across our first definite discouragement. The placewas full of men and they were all willing to talk. Fully three quarterswere, like ourselves, headed toward the mines; and were consequentlyfull of theoretical advice. The less they actually knew the moreinsistent they were that theirs was the only one sure route or localityor method. Of the remainder probably half were the permanent populationof the place, and busily occupied in making what money they could. Theywere storekeepers, gamblers, wagon owners, saloonkeepers, transportationmen. Of course we could quickly have had from most of these men verydefinite and practical advice as to where to go and how to get there;but the advice would most likely have been strongly tempered withself-interest. The rest of those we encountered were on their way backfrom the mines. And from them we got our first dash of cold water in theface.

  According to them the whole gold-fable was vastly exaggerated. To besure there was gold, no one could deny that,
but it occurred veryrarely, and in terrible places to get at. One had to put in ten dollars'worth of work, to get out one dollars' worth of dust. And provisionswere so high that the cost of living ate up all the profits. Besides, wewere much too late. All the good claims had been taken up and worked outby the earliest comers. There was much sickness in the mines, and menwere dying like flies. A man was a fool ever to leave home but adouble-dyed fool not to return there as soon as possible. Thus the armyof the discouraged. There were so many of them, and they talked soconvincingly, that I, for one, felt my golden dream dissipating; and aglance at Johnny's face showed that he was much in the same frame ofmind. We were very young; and we had so long been keyed up so high thata reaction was almost inevitable. Yank showed no sign; but chewed histobacco imperturbably.

  We continued our inquiries, however, and had soon acquired a mass ofvaried information. The nearest mines were about sixty miles away; wecould get our freight transported that far by the native Californian_cargadores_ at fifty dollars the hundredweight. Or we could walkand carry our own goods. Or we might buy a horse or so to pack in ourbelongings. If we wanted to talk to the _cargadores_ we must visittheir camp over toward the south; if we wanted to buy horses we could donothing better than to talk to McClellan, at Sutter's Fort. Fiftydollars a hundred seemed pretty steep for freighting; we would not beable to carry all we owned on our backs; we decided to try to buy thehorses.

  Accordingly next morning, after a delicious sleep under the open sky, weset out to cover the three or four miles to Sutter's Fort.

  This was my first sight of the California country landscape, and I sawit at the most beautiful time of year. The low-rolling hills were brightgreen, against which blended the darker green of the parklike oaks. Overthe slopes were washes of colour where the wild flowers grew, likebright scarves laid out in the sun. They were of deep orange, or anequally deep blue, or, perhaps, of mingled white and purple. Eachvariety, and there were many of them, seemed to grow by itself so thatthe colours were massed. Johnny muttered something about "the trailingglory--banners of the hills"; but whether that was a quotation or justJohnny I do not know.

  The air was very warm and grateful, and the sky extraordinarily blue.Broad-pinioned birds wheeled slowly, very high; and all about us, on thetips of swaying bushes and in the tops of trees, thousands of goldenlarks were singing. They were in appearance like our meadow-larks backeast, but their note was quite different; more joyous and lilting, butwith the same liquid quality. We flushed many sparrows of differentsorts; and we saw the plumed quail, the gallant, trim, little,well-groomed gentlemen, running rapidly ahead of us. And over it allshowered the clear warmth of the sun, like some subtle golden ether thatdissolved and disengaged from the sleeping hills multitudinous hummingsof insects, songs of birds, odours of earth, perfumes of flowers.

  In spite of ourselves our spirits rose. We forgot our anxious figuringson ways and means, our too concentrated hopes of success, our feverish,intent, single-minded desire for gold. Three abreast we marched forwardthrough the waving, shimmering wild oats, humming once more the strainsof the silly little song to which the gold seekers had elected tostride:

  "I soon shall be in mining camps, And then I'll look around, And when I see the gold-dust there, I'll pick it off the ground.

  "I'll scrape the mountains clean, old girl, I'll drain the rivers dry; I'm off for California. Susannah, don't you cry!"

  Even old Yank joined in the chorus, and he had about as much voice as arusty windmill, and about the same idea of tune as a hog has of war.

  "Oh, Susannah! don't you cry for me! I'm off to California with my washbowl on my knee!"

  We topped a rise and advanced on Sutter's Fort as though we intended byforce and arms to take that historic post.

  PART III

  THE MINES